D H Lawrence: Poet

This collection of Keith Sagar's writings on the poetry of D H Lawrence includes many new interpretations of well-known poems. It ends with a year-by-year checklist of reviews and criticism of Lawrence’s poems, from 1913 to the present. Though much has been written about Lawrence's poetry (as revealed by the several hundred entries in the book's checklist of criticism), there have been relatively few full length studies. This book deals with the whole range of his poetry from his earliest poems, such as 'To Campions' and 'To Guelder Roses', through the poems inspired by his elopement with and subsequent marriage to Frieda Weekley (Look! We Have Come Through!), to the mature achievement, in free verse forms inspired by Walt Whitman, of Birds, Beasts and Flowers, Pansies and Last Poems. The genesis of the poems in Lawrence's life is explored; and there are new interpretations of his most memorable poems, such as 'The Wild Common', 'Piano', 'Song of a Man Who Has Come Through', Tortoises, 'Peach', 'Pomegranate', 'Snake', 'Bavarian Gentians' and 'The Ship of Death'. "Keith Sagar has done more than any other critic to reshape understanding of Lawrence as poet. In this collection of essays, he writes, with unpretentious ease and the gravity that comes from a life-time’s critical consideration, on the full range of the poetry." --Christopher Pollnitz "Sagar's eloquent prose and precise manner of thought set the gorgeous passages of verse and prose that he cites from Lawrence within a frame that does full justice to, indeed surprisingly re-enlivens, even the best-known among them. ... I would urge Lawrence scholars as well to reacquaint themselves with Sagar's thought and writing on the poetry, so carefully gathered into a single excursus on the poetry. ...His articulately discriminating tastes enable him to make the case that much more thoroughly and unarguably for Lawrence's verse at its most astonishing..."-- Holly Laird in The D. H. Lawrence Review