Customer Reviews

Complete Poems (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book of poems shares the top spot in my bookcase with Whitman's "Leaves of Grass". They are accessible, highly perceptive, pertinent and intensely personal. My favorites are:

"FIDELITY" - "...The wonderful slow flow of the sapphire..."

"GOD IS BORN" - "...And so we see, God is not until he is born. And also we see there is no end to the birth of God."

"SHIP OF DEATH" (Appendix III version) - "...Pulling the long oars of a lifetime's courage, ...and eating the brave bread of a wholesome knowledge..."

"GRIEF" - "...How am I clotted together Out of this soft matrix... The air, the flowing sunshine and bright dust..."

"WEDLOCK" - "...How sure the future is within me. I am like a seed with a perfect flower enclosed..."

Finally, as a scientist I marvel at his intuitive grasp of relativity in "SPACE" and "RELATIVITY" - ..."As if the atom were an impulsive thing always changing its mind."

I would be delighted to share my enthusiasm with other readers.

This is the best book that i have. It is a must read for all who can read and all Special Forces. It put life on hold as you read it.

The most moving is "self pity"

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. --D. H. Lawrence

I became acquainted with Lawrence's novels my sophomore year in college, and was hooked. A couple of years down the line, a professor recommended I take a look at his poetry, which he suggested was equally great, if not greater. He said he was like a British Whitman. Investigating the analogy, I came across this quote of Lawrence's: "Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman, the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman, the one pioneer. And only Whitman. No English pioneers, no French. No European pioneer-poets. In Europe the would-be pioneers are mere innovators. The same in America. Ahead of Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into the wilderness of unopened life, Whitman. Beyond him, none." Hyperbolic? Could be, and I'm admittedly a poor judge of poetry, much of it passing over my head, but there is more than enough in this hefty 1,000+ page paperback edition to convince me of Lawrence's greatness in verse. The book is split into "Rhyming poems," "Unrhyming poems," "Pansies," "Nettles," "Last poems" and "Uncollected poems." A couple of the shorter ones--
SUNSET
"There is a band of dull gold in the west, and say what you like
again and again some god of evening leans out of it
and shares being with me, silkily
all of twilight."
REVOLUTIONS AS SUCH!
"Curiously enough, actual revolutions are made by robots,
living people never make revolutions,
they can't, life means too much to them."
TALK OF FAITH
"And people who talk about faith
usually want to force somebody to agree with them,
as if there was safety in numbers, even for faith."
LUCIFER
"Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
But tell me, tell me, how do you know
that he lost any of his brightness in falling?
He only fell out of your ken, you orthodox angels,
you dull angels, tarnished with centuries of conventionality."

The collection of poems is great. The book is very complete and organized in a easy to read format. I'm really glad I bought this book.

... including some early drafts. with notes and indexed first lines and titles.

Lawrence was a master of word craft and metaphor, with the eye and vocabulary of a biologist. you'll need a good dictionary. one of my favorites is "Mountain Lion" where he's wandering in the high desert and happens on two hunters who had trapped and killed a cougar. Lawrence tracks back to the lions den, climbs up and stands at the cave entrance and describes what the lion saw from there. the last stanza ...

And I think in this empty world there was room for me and a mountain lion.
And I think in the world beyond, how easily we might spare a million or two of humans
And never miss them.
Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white frost-face of that slim yellow mountain lion!

Lawrence began with imitative Georgian verse filled with archaic turns and cliched tropes. But influenced by Whitman he turned to a kind of free verse, and so began his long life in creating a vital poetry. Lawrence's poetry is the expression of his most initimate feelings. The poems which are most renowed are those which express his relation to nature,"The Snake" perhaps being the most well- known of them. He also has however especially towards the end , poetry which simply argues and derides those who oppose him.
His poetry becomes so ' free ' at time that it would seem closer to 'prose poetry' than Poetry itself.
His poems are short, and have sudden turns which may spring the lines to life.
I find however a shortcoming in what I would call a lack of 'memorable lines'.