SOURCE: "D. H. Lawrence, Major Poet," in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 26, No. 3, Fall, 1984, pp. 303-30.

In the following essay, Poole attempts to defend Lawrence as a major poet fully in control of poetic technique.

Over the years, a number of studies of Lawrence's poetry have appeared, though by no means as many as his merits suggest, and it is astonishing that the Open University's third-level course on twentieth-century poetry¹ not only omits Lawrence from the poets studied, but manages to accord him little more than a passing mention.

Nevertheless, some good studies have appeared, but the emphasis has hardly been on Lawrence's technical artistry. In one way or another, most studies have been interpretative. One of the earliest was Horace Gregory, who, writing not long after Lawrence's death, makes statements which appear to have influenced later critics:

Lawrence could not sit down to write poetry...