Selected Poems
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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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Proving there are still plenty of poetic miles left in rhythm and rhyme, as well as in Larkinesque cynicism, this career-spanning collection offers an introduction to the work of a leading British poet and former professor of poetry at Oxford. Love and menace are the principal muses for Fenton's dark wit. Whether describing how an ex is safe because she's no longer loved ("What belongs to the wind and rain/ Is out of danger from the storm") or narrating war's awful arithmetic ("One man shall wake from terror to his bed/ Five men shall be dead"), the control behind these lines is often terrifying. Many of the most powerful poems memorialize the lingering effects of war. Fenton has a knack for capturing awful thoughts and moments, which one wants to forget but can't:"...he forgot to say to me/ How an honest man should die." There's also a punch to the love poems; in one singsong piece, a husband commands his wife to be happy, or he'll leave. Also included is the libretto for The Love Bomb, in which a woman leaves her lover for a cult, then tries to recruit him. It's hard to argue with formal, deeply biting lyricism done so well.
