Book description
From early, rhyming work in Love Poems and Others (1913) to
the groundbreaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beast and
Flowers (1923), the poems of D. H Lawrence challenged convention
and inspired later poets. This voloume includes extensive selections
from these and other editions, and contains some of his most famous
poems, such as 'Piano', a nostalgic reflection on lost youth and love
for his mother; ' Snake' , exploring human fear of the natural world;
the short, cutting commment of sexual politics of 'Can't be Borne';
and the quiet philosophical resignation of 'Basta!'. Using the revised
poems, but in the order in which they appear in their original
collections, this selection offers a fresh perspective that revals an
innovative poet who gave voice to his most intense emotions.
In his introduction, James Fenton dicusses the early publication and
critical reception of Lawrence's poems, his develpoments as a poet and
his use of free verse. This edition also includes a chronology,
further reading and appendices, including Lawrence's comments on the
work of Walt Whitman.
David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottinghamshire in 1885. His
first novel, The White Peacock, was published in 1911. The next year
Lawrence published Sons and Lovers and ran off to Germany with Frieda
Weekley, his former tutor's wife. His masterpieces The Rainbow and
Women in Love were completed in quick succession, but the first was
suppressed as indecent and the second was not published until 1920.
Lawrence's lyrical writings challenged convention, promoting a return
to an ideal of nature where sex is seen as a sacrament. In 1925
Lawrence's final novel, Lady Chatterly's Lover, was banned in England
and the United States for indecency. He died of tuberculosis in 1930
in Venice.
James Fenton was born in Lincoln in 1949 and educated at Magdalen
College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He has
worked as political journalist, drama critic, book reviewer, war
correspondence, foreign correspondent and columnist. He is a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Literature and was Oxford Professor of Poetry for
the period 1994-99.
