'Autumn Rain' is astonishing. It should feature in any Imagist anthology. You are right to note the strange omission of Lawrence from areas where he illuminates and contrasts, including the war poems. You sent me across to your Pindaric, Cowley essay which I find astonishing, not least your translation.
Thanks so much for commenting Michael. I am honoured! I was thinking of 'Autumn Rain' as a WWI poem (because of the date and content, but also more prosaically because rain features prominently in so many of them), but you're absolutely right, it is an Imagist poem. I'm so glad you found the essay on new forms interesting too, the whole "17th century free verse in Latin" thing is indeed rather surprising, indeed so surprising that a lot of people just don't believe me I think. But there was loads of it! Trying to translate Latin poetry of this period in such a way that they seem like poems, without either flattening their strangeness or falling into obscurity, is an endless but fascinating challenge.
I love Lawrence's poetry and have since I was younger; as you say, a lot of it is quite diaristic, but it's a hell of a diary. And I remember bits of it too, like the opening to 'Pomegranate':
You tell me I am wrong.
Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?
I am not wrong.
and its closing lines
For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.
It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.
Apologies for the ridiculously late comment—I’m new to your writing here.
And many thanks for this excellent return to DHL’s poetry. I appreciate it especially as I’m going back through various works of Lawrence’s, including his poetry and the final book on Apocalypse, as part of a new writing project. I also sometimes teach his short stories. I’m a great fan of DHL and have been unwaveringly since I was a teen, though you’re right he’s quite out of fashion.
Regarding translating poetry: I think of him mainly as a prose writer, despite the large quantity of verse (and some other qualities, such as his great fondness for hymns, which incidentally speaks to your excellent point about him as a religious writer). I know he translated Verga. He knew three or four languages decently well but failed to learn Russian, though he tried. (He reviewed a translated book or two by Rozanov, who was something like a Russian Lawrence. I’d like to know more about what attracted him to Russian.) I haven’t read it, but there’s an older book called D H Lawrence and the Art of Translation by G M Hyde.
Wish I could be of more help but I’m no more than an amateur myself when it comes to Lawrence.
Thanks so much for this comment Jonathan -- fascinating info about Lawrence's languages, v. interesting about the Russian, and a great tip about the Hyde book. I'll see if I can get hold of it somewhere.
Yes, as the essay you link to makes clear, Lawrence and Whitman make an interesting pair. I do get a kick out of Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), at least where I can understand him. Some critics are most entertaining when they’re cranky, and he’s pretty cranky here. How he loathes Benjamin Franklin (“The Perfectibility of Man! Ah heaven, what a dreary theme!”).
These are mostly essays on 19th century novelists, but the last one is on Whitman, whose poetry could also be described as “baggy.” Lawrence is a little incoherent at times, it seems to me, annoyed by Whitman’s urge to “merge” into all things, or how Whitman saw everything as female, even himself, etc. But then he suddenly changes his tune:
“Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman, the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman, the one pioneer. And only Whitman. No English pioneers, no French. No European pioneer-poets. In Europe the would-be pioneers are mere innovators. The same in America. Ahead of Whitman, nothing.”
(If you’re watching, presumably with young people, The Marvels, a new movie on Disney, listen for the bit where teenaged Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) addresses Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) as “Oh Captain, my captain.” Someone was paying attention in class. Lawrence gets in a good one with that line too, musing about how Whitman might even have assumed “one identity with Charlie Chaplin”: “Oh, Charlie, my Charlie, another film is done —”.)
Thanks so much for such a rich comment. It would be fascinating to teach Lawrence and Whitman alongside each other. I should read more of Lawrence's criticism. When I had my intense Lawrence phase as a teenager, I don't think I even knew he'd written anything other than fiction and poetry. But that's a great quotation on Whitman! And v. interesting that he explicitly says the French aren't pioneers for him, either, since so many of his generation were influenced mainly by French literature.
A companion book (at least in my mind) to Lawrence’s might be William Carlos Williams’ In the American Grain (1925). These are less literary essays than his idiosyncratic takes on the history of the Western hemisphere, starting with Red Eric. It’s fascinating to think of these two great Modernists sitting down to the writing and ideas that had influenced them and both writing about Franklin and Poe. It’s like the answer to an obscure trivia question. Lawrence would have been about 38 when he published his book, Williams about 42 with his.
Have you read Donald Davie's essays on American poetry, "Two Ways out of Whitman"? His volume on British poetry also alludes to Whitman in its title, "With the Grain". I don't have either volume here in Paris unfortunately so can't check whether he discusses Whitman and Lawrence together.
Whitman is like a weather front, touching everything, but it’s not always clear to me where and what his influences are these days. I have this idea that Bob Dylan was influenced by Whitman, but perhaps only via the Beats. So to get from Whitman’s “I sing the body electric” to Dylan’s “The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face” we have to go through Ginsberg (although it’s perhaps worth noting that Dylan has “reverted” to anapestic meter in his line).
Yes I think you're right that he's one of those authors who remains v. influential, especially in the US, but often in quite a diffuse and perhaps mainly second-hand way. Whereas Thomas Hardy, only slightly younger, has this curious quality I think of remaining both largely critically overlooked/unfashionable and highly influential in a direct way upon many UK poets. I don't know Whitman very well, though I did think about him a bit when working on Robert Duncan and his circle, arguably another conduit like the beat poets for his ongoing stylistic influence. (And Duncan wrote very tenderly about Whitman, e.g. in the 'Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar'.)
Thank you so much. I'm an enthusiast for Lawrence, but have not read much of the poetry for years. I also now want to go back to them.
There's an early review of some Lawrence poetry by Pound: he really likes the dialect poems. Lawrence is so good with dialect. I think of the mother's lament in 'Odour of Chysanthemums', prose, but a prose-poem.
'Autumn Rain' is astonishing. It should feature in any Imagist anthology. You are right to note the strange omission of Lawrence from areas where he illuminates and contrasts, including the war poems. You sent me across to your Pindaric, Cowley essay which I find astonishing, not least your translation.
Thanks so much for commenting Michael. I am honoured! I was thinking of 'Autumn Rain' as a WWI poem (because of the date and content, but also more prosaically because rain features prominently in so many of them), but you're absolutely right, it is an Imagist poem. I'm so glad you found the essay on new forms interesting too, the whole "17th century free verse in Latin" thing is indeed rather surprising, indeed so surprising that a lot of people just don't believe me I think. But there was loads of it! Trying to translate Latin poetry of this period in such a way that they seem like poems, without either flattening their strangeness or falling into obscurity, is an endless but fascinating challenge.
I love Lawrence's poetry and have since I was younger; as you say, a lot of it is quite diaristic, but it's a hell of a diary. And I remember bits of it too, like the opening to 'Pomegranate':
You tell me I am wrong.
Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?
I am not wrong.
and its closing lines
For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.
It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.
Thanks so much for commenting James. I love your substack!
Hearing that more and more. It's proving a severe challenge to my sense of underachievement
Apologies for the ridiculously late comment—I’m new to your writing here.
And many thanks for this excellent return to DHL’s poetry. I appreciate it especially as I’m going back through various works of Lawrence’s, including his poetry and the final book on Apocalypse, as part of a new writing project. I also sometimes teach his short stories. I’m a great fan of DHL and have been unwaveringly since I was a teen, though you’re right he’s quite out of fashion.
Regarding translating poetry: I think of him mainly as a prose writer, despite the large quantity of verse (and some other qualities, such as his great fondness for hymns, which incidentally speaks to your excellent point about him as a religious writer). I know he translated Verga. He knew three or four languages decently well but failed to learn Russian, though he tried. (He reviewed a translated book or two by Rozanov, who was something like a Russian Lawrence. I’d like to know more about what attracted him to Russian.) I haven’t read it, but there’s an older book called D H Lawrence and the Art of Translation by G M Hyde.
Wish I could be of more help but I’m no more than an amateur myself when it comes to Lawrence.
Thanks so much for this comment Jonathan -- fascinating info about Lawrence's languages, v. interesting about the Russian, and a great tip about the Hyde book. I'll see if I can get hold of it somewhere.
Yes, as the essay you link to makes clear, Lawrence and Whitman make an interesting pair. I do get a kick out of Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), at least where I can understand him. Some critics are most entertaining when they’re cranky, and he’s pretty cranky here. How he loathes Benjamin Franklin (“The Perfectibility of Man! Ah heaven, what a dreary theme!”).
These are mostly essays on 19th century novelists, but the last one is on Whitman, whose poetry could also be described as “baggy.” Lawrence is a little incoherent at times, it seems to me, annoyed by Whitman’s urge to “merge” into all things, or how Whitman saw everything as female, even himself, etc. But then he suddenly changes his tune:
“Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me. Whitman, the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman, the one pioneer. And only Whitman. No English pioneers, no French. No European pioneer-poets. In Europe the would-be pioneers are mere innovators. The same in America. Ahead of Whitman, nothing.”
(If you’re watching, presumably with young people, The Marvels, a new movie on Disney, listen for the bit where teenaged Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) addresses Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) as “Oh Captain, my captain.” Someone was paying attention in class. Lawrence gets in a good one with that line too, musing about how Whitman might even have assumed “one identity with Charlie Chaplin”: “Oh, Charlie, my Charlie, another film is done —”.)
Thanks so much for such a rich comment. It would be fascinating to teach Lawrence and Whitman alongside each other. I should read more of Lawrence's criticism. When I had my intense Lawrence phase as a teenager, I don't think I even knew he'd written anything other than fiction and poetry. But that's a great quotation on Whitman! And v. interesting that he explicitly says the French aren't pioneers for him, either, since so many of his generation were influenced mainly by French literature.
A companion book (at least in my mind) to Lawrence’s might be William Carlos Williams’ In the American Grain (1925). These are less literary essays than his idiosyncratic takes on the history of the Western hemisphere, starting with Red Eric. It’s fascinating to think of these two great Modernists sitting down to the writing and ideas that had influenced them and both writing about Franklin and Poe. It’s like the answer to an obscure trivia question. Lawrence would have been about 38 when he published his book, Williams about 42 with his.
Have you read Donald Davie's essays on American poetry, "Two Ways out of Whitman"? His volume on British poetry also alludes to Whitman in its title, "With the Grain". I don't have either volume here in Paris unfortunately so can't check whether he discusses Whitman and Lawrence together.
I’ve added those books to my list. Thanks.
Whitman is like a weather front, touching everything, but it’s not always clear to me where and what his influences are these days. I have this idea that Bob Dylan was influenced by Whitman, but perhaps only via the Beats. So to get from Whitman’s “I sing the body electric” to Dylan’s “The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face” we have to go through Ginsberg (although it’s perhaps worth noting that Dylan has “reverted” to anapestic meter in his line).
Yes I think you're right that he's one of those authors who remains v. influential, especially in the US, but often in quite a diffuse and perhaps mainly second-hand way. Whereas Thomas Hardy, only slightly younger, has this curious quality I think of remaining both largely critically overlooked/unfashionable and highly influential in a direct way upon many UK poets. I don't know Whitman very well, though I did think about him a bit when working on Robert Duncan and his circle, arguably another conduit like the beat poets for his ongoing stylistic influence. (And Duncan wrote very tenderly about Whitman, e.g. in the 'Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar'.)
Thank you so much. I'm an enthusiast for Lawrence, but have not read much of the poetry for years. I also now want to go back to them.
There's an early review of some Lawrence poetry by Pound: he really likes the dialect poems. Lawrence is so good with dialect. I think of the mother's lament in 'Odour of Chysanthemums', prose, but a prose-poem.
Ah yes, that's such a wonderful story, I just taught it last week actually.