This is an exceptional collection of superb and introspectively distinct poems from the pen of master author D. H. Lawrence. Never failing to both delight and amaze, Lawrence's poems exhibit an insight that elevates them to a level of splendid uniqueness. These are poems that come from the heart and mind of one who has watched the unspeakable destruction of war wreak havoc across Europe, one who has witnessed the devastation inflicted on his country by an immense power that must be overcome and defeated. This is a also a poet who knows that despite unimaginable privation, everyday life must and will continue, and everyday psychological trauma must and will continue - and as such both must and will be eternally etched by the poet in the literary record.
These are poems of the present, of facets of human existence in all its diversity, of aspects of life revealed with an intensity fitting their urgency. The urgency and resilience of life - the determination to persevere in the face of adversity - ebbs and flows through these superb poems like the narrative of a river whose, "invisible tide / Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye." And yet this pseudo-sentient river, this "pouring measure / Of death-producing wine," solemnly comes with the poetic assurance of salvation, of elegiac deliverance, and with the promise, "By heaven and earth and hellish stream / To break this sick and nauseous dream / We writhe and lust in, both."
Indeed, if a dream it is in which we "writhe and lust," if "souls of the dead / In stupor persist at the gates of life," it is a dream fully understood and clearly elucidated by this poet, this seer, this literary master.
- Summary by Bruce Kachuk
These are poems of the present, of facets of human existence in all its diversity, of aspects of life revealed with an intensity fitting their urgency. The urgency and resilience of life - the determination to persevere in the face of adversity - ebbs and flows through these superb poems like the narrative of a river whose, "invisible tide / Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye." And yet this pseudo-sentient river, this "pouring measure / Of death-producing wine," solemnly comes with the poetic assurance of salvation, of elegiac deliverance, and with the promise, "By heaven and earth and hellish stream / To break this sick and nauseous dream / We writhe and lust in, both."
Indeed, if a dream it is in which we "writhe and lust," if "souls of the dead / In stupor persist at the gates of life," it is a dream fully understood and clearly elucidated by this poet, this seer, this literary master.
- Summary by Bruce Kachuk
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Chapters
- Chapter 1
Apprehension
01:10 - Chapter 2
Coming Awake
00:54 - Chapter 3
From a College Window
01:07 - Chapter 4
Flapper
01:16 - Chapter 5
Birdcage Walk
00:41 - Chapter 6
Letter from Town: The Almond Tree
01:32 - Chapter 7
Flat Suburbs, S.W., in the Morning
01:12 - Chapter 8
Thief in the Night
00:44 - Chapter 9
Letter from Town: On a Grey Evening in March
02:16 - Chapter 10
Suburbs on a Hazy Day
01:14 - Chapter 11
Hyde Park at Night: Clerks
01:38 - Chapter 12
Gipsy
00:46 - Chapter 13
Two-Fold
00:41 - Chapter 14
Under the Oak
01:46 - Chapter 15
Sigh no More
01:50 - Chapter 16
Love Storm
02:04 - Chapter 17
Parliament Hill in the Evening
01:01 - Chapter 18
Piccadilly Circus at Night: Street Walkers
01:53 - Chapter 19
Tarantella
01:46 - Chapter 20
In Church
01:03 - Chapter 21
Piano
01:25 - Chapter 22
Embankment at Night: Charity
01:30 - Chapter 23
Phantasmagoria
02:13 - Chapter 24
Next Morning
01:56 - Chapter 25
Palimpsest of Twilight
00:59 - Chapter 26
Embankment at Night: Outcasts
05:35 - Chapter 27
Winter in the Boulevard
01:38 - Chapter 28
School on the Outskirts
01:17 - Chapter 29
Sickness
01:28 - Chapter 30
Everlasting Flowers
02:26 - Chapter 31
The North Country
02:06 - Chapter 32
Bitterness of Death
03:28 - Chapter 33
Seven Seals
03:06 - Chapter 34
Reading a Letter
01:31 - Chapter 35
Twenty Years Ago
01:06 - Chapter 36
Intime
03:17 - Chapter 37
Two Wives
06:41 - Chapter 38
Heimweh
01:16 - Chapter 39
Debacle
02:09 - Chapter 40
Narcissus
01:32 - Chapter 41
Autumn Sunshine
01:47 - Chapter 42
On That Day
01:33