SOURCE: Deutsch, Babette. “The Earthly and the Definite.” In Poetry in Our Time, pp. 86-92. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1956.

In the following excerpt, Deutsch characterizes Lawrence's poetry as generally undisciplined and subjective, yet not totally without merit or fine moments of imagery and drama.

The poetry of both Walsh and Carnevali has something of the vitality, something of the savage exacerbated tenderness, that marks the work of D. H. Lawrence. He attached himself early to the imagists rather because, like them, he craved immediacy, than because he understood their principles. He was too subjective to share their interest in technical subtleties, too apt to pour into his poems the crude emotion of the moment in all its turbidness. Yet his eye was the alert servant of his feeling, and he had an ear for personal rhythms. Scattered among his poems are a few small clear...