Selected Poems
From early, rhyming works in Love Poems and Others (1913) to the ground-breaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) the poems of D. H. Lawrence challenged convention and inspired later poets.
This volume includes extensive selections from these and other editions, and contains some 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 comment on 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 appeared in their original collections, this selection offers a fresh perspective that reveals an innovative poet who gave voice to his most intense emotions.
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.