Birds, Beasts and Flowers: Poems

David Herbert Lawrence

David R. Godine Publisher, 1992 - Poetry - 213 pages

"Birds, Beasts, and Flowers! is the peak of Lawrence's achievement as a poet....The lucidity of his language matches the intensity of his vision; he can make the reader see what he is saying as very few writers can."--W. H. Auden

D. H. Lawrence made his first great experiment in free verse in this collection of poems about animals and the natural world, published when he was thirty-eight. This Black Sparrow edition re-sets the text in the format of the first edition (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923) and restores several "indecent" lines suppressed by the original publisher. Lawrence's original jacket artwork is reproduced on the jacket in full color.

In the words of the Academy of American Poets, "Lawrence believed in writing poetry that was stark, immediate and true to the mysterious inner force which motivated it. Many of his best-loved poems treat the physical and inner life of plants and animals; others are bitterly satiric and express his outrage at the puritanism and hypocrisy of conventional Anglo-Saxon Society."

Contents

• The Revolutionary: 17
• Tropic: 33
• The Evangelistic Beasts: 55
• Creatures: 71
• Reptiles: 93
• Birds: 99
• Animals: 111
• Ghosts: 149
• The American Eagle: 159

About the author

David Herbert Lawrence was born in 1885 in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England. Though better known as a novelist, his first published works were poems, and his poetry, especially his evocations of the natural world, have since had a significant influence on many poets on both side of the Atlantic. He was charged with obscenity and persecuted during World War I for the supposed German sympathies of his wife, Frieda. Consequently, they traveled around the world, spending considerable time in Taos, New Mexico, where Lawrence became a celebrity attraction. He died in France in 1930.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Birds, Beasts and Flowers: Poems; G - Reference,Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series
• Author: David Herbert Lawrence
• Edition: reprint, revised
• Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher, 1992
• ISBN: 0876858663, 9780876858660
• Length: 213 pages
• Subjects: Poetry / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Poetry / General; Poetry / Subjects & Themes / Animals & Nature