SOURCE: "D. H. Lawrence and the Resources of Poetry," in Language and Style, Vol. XII, No. 1, Winter, 1979, pp. 3-12.

In the following essay, Presley examines Lawrence's deployment of free verse and its relationship to the themes of his poetry.

The poetry of D. H. Lawrence presents an interesting problem for stylistic investigation. Nearly all critics agree that Lawrence evolved a new form; that, from a mediocre Georgian lyricist, he became a sometimes excellent free-verse lyricist. Though his mature work has been widely influential, especially in America, his poetry is often treated as an adjunct to the novels, and has received little detailed examination.

Lawrence has always been respected by his fellow poets, even when they disagree with him. Though Pound referred to the early work as "a sort of pre-raphaelitish slush, disgusting or very nearly so,"¹ he praised the dialect poems and, in a letter to Harriet Monroe...