Selected Poems

by D.H. Lawrence, Keith M. Sagar (Introduction)

Brings together 175 poems that reveal Lawrence's virtuosity in this genre

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 20th Century, Fiction, Literature, British Literature, English Literature

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English writer of the 20th century, whose prolific and diverse output included novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism, and personal letters. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, human sexuality and instinct.

Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage." At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical "great tradition" of the English novel. He is now generally valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.H._Law...

Reviews

[Punk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry. I doubt that any of you are deliberating over whether or not to buy this poetry collection from 1966, but in case you are, or, like me, you found it on your bookshelf and decided to read it, here's what's what.

First off, this is the first volume of Lawrence's poetry I've read. Prior to this, I only knew him from "Figs," which is not in this collection, and I was prepared not to like him. Because you hear things about D.H. Lawrence, like he hates women, or he's preoccupied with sex, that sort of thing. And it's true that occasionally those things intersect with dickbag-like accuracy:

I Wish I Knew A Woman

I wish I knew a woman
who was like a red fire on the hearth
glowing after the day's restless draughts.

So that one could draw near her
in the red stillness of the dusk
and really take delight in her
without having to make the polite effort of loving her
or the mental effort of making her acquaintance.
Without having to take a chill, talking to her.

Well said, David Herbert! Because isn't that what we all want? A woman to warm us without having to deal with her feelings, or listen to her talk? Just a hot, silent, willing female body, open as a fire grate.

But, surprisingly, Lawrence also wrote quote a few poems from the perspective of women. And when he's not suggesting women shut up and open their legs, he writes some pretty sexy stuff. So I found a lot to like in this volume, like "Wedding Morn," "After the Opera," "Snake," "Humming-Bird," and "The Elephant is Slow to Mate." Because, oh yes, Lawrence's preoccupation with sex does not stop at the human, no. He's also interested in tortoise sex, and elephant sex, and whale sex. As one is.

I have now written myself into a corner because when I say I liked his poems about nature, you will immediately wonder if that includes the one with the whale phallus. Yes, I'm afraid so. His nature poems have a peaceful rhythm to them, and I like the keen way he looks at animals, or trees, or the huntsman coming home to his wife:

With his hand he turns my face to him
And caresses me with his fingers that still smell grim
Of rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare!
I know not what fine wire is round my throat;
I only know I let him finger there
My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.

That's one of his poems from the female perspective. The same hunting imagery that isn't that remarkable in the beginning of the poem (when it's about actual hunting) becomes hot and powerful when applied to sex.

So I think I could find quite a lot to like about Lawrence, as long as I ignore his dickbag tendencies. I want to say his earlier work appeals more to me, but I can't really tell because this collection is organized so poorly.

And so we reach my review of the collection. Edited by Kenneth Rexroth, with an introduction by Kenneth Rexroth. Rexroth, Rexroth, Rexroth. His fawning introduction is all but useless for the common reader. There's a lot of speculation about what Lawrence did or did not know, read, study, feel. It didn't make me at all enthused about reading Lawrence's poetry despite the fact that Rexroth clearly believed Lawrence to be the best poet of his generation (Rexroth: "Only Yeats stands up against Lawrence."). All I got out of it was the sense that Rexroth really wanted to make out with D.H.

The collection itself is not great to look at. The poems are arranged one after the other, no white space at the end of a poem, sometimes two or three to a page. No dates. No index. There is a timeline of D.H. Lawrence's life, but that would have been more meaningful if I knew when each poem was written.

Three stars for the poetry. Two stars for the collection.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of these poems were too sexual for my tastes in poetry, but I suppose I should have expected that from the author of Lady Chatterly's Lover. There were quite a few poems with themes of death, oblivion and humanity, which I mostly enjoyed, but I wasn't a fan of the tortoise sex and elephant sex and whale sex....

[Magda Brol · Rating 3 out of 5]

did he really need to say all that

[Anna Kļaviņa · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first book by Lawrence
Quite naturally some poems I enjoyed more than others. One of my favourite is Fish and I was very glad when I found on YouTube, Andrew Scott reading a fragment of this poem. I absolutely love his voice! Here it is: Andrew Scott reads 'Fish'

To be a fish !

So utterly without misgiving
To be a fish
In the waters.

Loveless, and so lively!
Born before God was love,
Or life knew loving.
Beautifully beforehand with it all.

Admitted, they swarm in companies,
Fishes.
They drive in shoals.
But soundless, and out of contact.
They exchange no word, no spasm, not even anger.
Not one touch.
Many suspended together, forever apart.
Each one alone with the waters, upon one wave with the rest.

A magnetism in the water between them only.

I saw a water-serpent swim across the Anapo,
And I said to my heart, look, look at him!
With his head up, steering like a bird!
He’s a rare one, but he belongs…

But sitting in a boat on the Zeller lake
And watching the fishes in the breathing waters
Lift and swim and go their way—
I said to my heart, who are these?
And my heart couldn’t own them…
A slim young pike, with smart fins
And grey-striped suit, a young cub of a pike
Slouching along away below, half out of sight,
Like a lout on an obscure pavement…

Aha, there’s somebody in the know!

But watching closer
That motionless deadly motion,
That unnatural barrel body, that long ghoul nose,…
I left off hailing him.

I had made a mistake, I didn’t know him,
This grey, monotonous soul in the water,
This intense individual in shadow,
Fish-alive.

I didn’t know his God,
I didn’t know his God.

Which is perhaps the last admission that life has to wring
out of us.

I saw, dimly,
Once a big pike rush.
And small fish fly like splinters.
And I said to my heart, there are limits
To you, my heart;
And to the one God.
Fish are beyond me.

Other Gods
Beyond my range… gods beyond my God. .
They are beyond me, are fishes.
I stand at the pale of my being
And look beyond, and see
Fish, in the outerwards,
As one stands on a bank and looks in.
I have waited with a long rod
And suddenly pulled a gold-and-greenish, lucent fish from
below,
And had him fly like a halo round my head,
Lunging in the air on the line.

Unhooked his gorping, water-horny mouth.
And seen his horror-tilted eye,
His red-gold, water-precious, mirror-flat bright eye;
And felt him beat in my hand, with his mucous, leaping
life-throb.

And my heart accused itself
Thinking: I am not the measure of creation.
This is beyond me, this fish.
His God stands outside my God.

And the goId-and-green pure lacquer-mucus comes off in my
hand.
And the red-gold mirror-eye stares and dies,
And the water-suave contour dims.

But not before I have had to know
He was born in front of my sunrise.
Before my day.

He outstarts me.
And I, a many-fingered horror of daylight to him,
Have made him die.

Fishes,
With their gold, red eyes, and green-pure gleam, and
under-gold.
And their pre-world loneliness,
And more-than-lovelessness.
And white meat;
They move in other circles.

Outsiders.
Water-wayfarers.
Things of one element.
Aqueous,
Each by itself.

Cats, and the Neapolitans,
Sulphur sun-beasts.
Thirst for fish as for more-than-water;
Water-alive
To quench their over-sulphureous lusts.

But I, I only wonder
And don’t know.
I don’t know fishes.

In the beginning
Jesus was called The Fish.
And in the end.

From “Birds, Beasts, And Flowers: Poems By D. H. Lawrence.”

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/4 stars

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lawrence was, in my opinion, a much better poet than he was a novelist or even writer of short stories. The sequence of love poems he wrote shortly after meeting Frieda has few equals in 20th century literature. In the months leading up to his early death at age 42 he wrote poetry of such visionary force and strangeness one is almost tempted to posit the existence of something like a "premature late style" --Beethoven, told at 40 he was dying, composing the great late quartets...

[Abeey Morsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

يتكون الكتاب من ثلاثه أجزاء
** مقدمة
تعد من أطول المقدمات التي مرت علي بكتاب.

** القسم الأول
عباره عن قصائد مقفاة من عده دواوين.

** القسم الثاني
يضم قصائد غير مقفاة من أربعة دواوين.

* فلنستيقظ لنشاهد ضوء نهار حق يغمرنا ببهاء.
* إذ إن ما أكنه من الغرام بك
له من الآلام ما أراني شبه عاجز عن إحتماله.
* ما أروع أن يحيا المرء و ينسي.
* و إذن فسنمسي سعداء و ستهنأ أنت كما أهنأ.
* و هذه هي النهاية.. هذا هو النسيان.

[Scott Alisoglu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The earlier material, while at times gripping, I found lacked the power of the later poems (Pansies the best collection). Though that may be as much a result of my own lack of understanding as anything ekse. His love of wildlife and the beauty of natures shines bright frequently. So call it 3.5.

[Salma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just like streaks of fire on the page,in ecstasy over the natural world and sensuality. One of my favorites, recalling the story of Persephone and Hades (a small portion below):

And in Sicily, on the meadows of Enna,
She thought she had left him;
But opened around her purple anemones,

Caverns,
Little hells of colour, caves of darkness,
Hell, risen in pursuit of her; royal, sumptuous
Pit-falls...


And the opening to "The Wild Common":

The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screaming proclaim

Some of them didn't really speak to me, like his poems about mosquitoes and peaches.
But the ones that did stayed in my head like favorite songs.

[megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 if it were possible. all gorgeous in their writing, some - being so enigmatic and intuitive - are a little difficult to understand but nonetheless pleasant to read. oddly enough if it was often these subjective ones i enjoyed more. while they are short they're still so expressive and personal, i'm almost jealous of his genius in word choice. lawrence has such a way with words i'm sure many people - including myself - could only dream of. i too frequently find myself lost in this book, and i don't mind a bit.

[Gerardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whenever I read D.H. Lawrence’s Poetry
by Gerardo Pacheco

something dark breaks in me
like when the sun enters into the world
of swamps, marshes and darkness

i can feel the rays
breaking everything away
making channels through my black heart

Lawrence’s word carved channels
into my pomegranate heart
his loyal follower

[Anita Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been lost in these pages many times. Lawrence's poetry is too often forgotten in favour of his novels despite his way with words poetically being potentially far more pleasing. This selection of poems will not disappoint! Highly recommended!

[Don Vandelinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I unexpectedly enjoyed this book. I'd like to think of this as a book of poetry for men that don't know what the big deal is about women and poetry.

Okay, I could have written this better but just go ahead and read it.

[Samuel Coulson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this when I was a young teenager, inspired a lifelong interest in poetry.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is hard to assess the quality of D H Lawrence’s poetry. The Introduction to this selection informs me that Lawrence’s collected poems were received poorly, and that this book contains his only good poetry. So for that reason Lawrence will remain famous primarily as a novelist.

The poems do contain a good range of Lawrence’s opinions and concerns. Lawrence was a highly-opinionated man and had strong views on everything, so the reader is unlikely to agree with all that he says. Still we are not required to do this – only to consider what he says, and how he says it.

As might be expected, love and sex feature largely in many of the poems. Keith Sagar (who compiled this selection) has chosen Lawrence’s original drafts, rather than the later versions where the sexually mature Lawrence imposes his experience onto his juvenilia. Nonetheless expect much sensuality here.

Lawrence’s attitude to love and sex always seems mysterious to me. I often feel that the man who presented himself as a high priest for a more liberated concept of love and sex did not always have a high opinion of love, sex or even women. He clearly had an ideal in his head, but his love poetry often has a streak of violence and even hatred in it.

There are brief hints of Lawrence’s upbringing here – poems written in dialect, poems about miners, and a poem about domestic abuse that hints at Lawrence’s parents. Being a miner’s son gave Lawrence a good deal of suspiciousness about technology. He feared that the workplace would reduce man to the status of a machine.

Some of the poems here criticise the notion of the human or animal body working like a machine, as Lawrence prefers something more mystical. He is unenthusiastic about science. The idea that a scientist might suggest that snow is really black actually outrages Lawrence. He is not fascinated by science challenging human perceptions – he positively hates it.

Curiously Lawrence writes many poems that talk about God here. This streak of religiosity is largely absent in his most famous novels, or at least it is not directly discussed. The poems seem to bring out a latent piety in Lawrence, though his viewpoint about the Christian god is as skittish as his opinions about everything else.

My favourite poems here are Lawrence’s verses about animals, including the justly famous ‘Snake’ in which Lawrence describes his fascination with the beauty of a snake that his civilised mind tells him he ought to kill.

This conflict between nature and human nature lies at the root of most of Lawrence’s nature poems. He has some peculiar views – well this is Lawrence – even suggesting that he likes to stamp on snowdrops and crocuses because they are not spring flowers.

As with ‘Snake’, Lawrence is drawn towards the less human of animals, or at least the ones that seem least identifiable. ‘Man and Bat’ has Lawrence pitched against an invading creature in his house. He wants to drive the bat out, but comes to realise that the bat wants to stay in his house because it is frightened of the daylight. Nonetheless his repugnance cannot allow him to leave the bat alone to stay inside his house until nightfall.

Other creatures that fascinate Lawrence are snapping tortoises, another reptilian presence, aggressive goats and a turkey-cock, malignant-looking elephants (I am uncertain why Lawrence is not keen on them), a mosquito, and fish (who live such loveless lives). Even a loveable dog is not truly loving, but gives her love to anyone who will treat her well.

This account of the animal kingdom reminds us that humans have become alienated from nature, but not always in bad ways. We at least can feel love for one another, and even for animals but the animals do not approach us in affection.

This is something that we need to remember as a species before we start hating foreigners, immigrants, Muslims, transgender people, or any other section of society that has never harmed us. When we love and respect others, we are human. When we engage in tribal hatreds, we are no better than the fish or the reptiles or any other creature that kills by instinct. It is also a good reason for us to treat animals well.

On the whole I rather enjoyed this selection, though some of the poems did not make much impression on me, especially the more abstract ones. At his best, Lawrence can be a tender, imaginative and even humorous poet. As with his novels, I feel like his best work here achieves true greatness but at other times I am out of sympathy with Lawrence.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ship of Death

I

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.

The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.

And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.

II

Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.

The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.

And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.

III

And can a man his own quietus make
with a bare bodkin?

With daggers, bodkins, bullets, man can make
a bruise or break of exit for his life;
but is that a quietus, O tell me, is it quietus?

Surely not so! for how could murder, even self-murder
ever a quietus make?

IV

O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!

How can we this, our own quietus, make?

V

Build then the ship of death, for you must take
the longest journey, to oblivion.

And die the death, the long and painful death
that lies between the old self and the new.

Already our bodies are fallen, bruised, badly bruised,
already our souls are oozing through the exit
of the cruel bruise.

Already the dark and endless ocean of the end
is washing in through the breaches of our wounds,
Already the flood is upon us.

Oh build your ship of death, your little ark
and furnish it with food, with little cakes, and wine
for the dark flight down oblivion.

VI

Piecemeal the body dies, and the timid soul
has her footing washed away, as the dark flood rises.

We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying
and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us
and soon it will rise on the world, on the outside world.

We are dying, we are dying, piecemeal our bodies are dying
and our strength leaves us,
and our soul cowers naked in the dark rain over the flood,
cowering in the last branches of the tree of our life.

VII

We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.

A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.

Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood's black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.

There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening blackness darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!

VIII

And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone

It is the end, it is oblivion.

IX

And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.

Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion

Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.

Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.

A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.

X

The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.

Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.

Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.

[Eadweard · Rating 3 out of 5]

And at last I know my love for you is here;         
I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,         
It is large, so large, I could not see it before,         
Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,               
Troubles, anxieties and pains.        
You are the call and I am the answer,         
You are the wish, and I the fulfilment,         
You are the night, and I the day.               
What else? it is perfect enough.               
It is perfectly complete,               
You and I,               
What more—?     
Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!
----




I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul

And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong
----




For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.

It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.
----




Evil, what is evil?         
There is only one evil, to deny life
----




Love is like a flower, it must flower and fade; if it doesn’t fade, it is not a flower,          
it’s either an artificial rag blossom, or an immortelle, for the cemetery.
----




Tell me a word               
that you’ve often heard,               
yet it makes you squint               
if you see it in print!               
Tell me a thing               
that you’ve often seen,               
yet if put in a book               
it makes you turn green!               
Tell me a thing               
that you often do,               
which described in a story               
shocks you through and through!               
Tell me what’s wrong               
with words or with you               
that you don’t mind the thing               
yet the name is taboo.

[Slow Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

"a flood of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown against him, die, and find death good"

St. Luke and The Fish are the two best poems here (the former for wings fanning out of the furnace-cracks of shoulder-sockets, the latter for the Faulknerian "i am not the measure of creation; his God stands outside my God"). "Figs" and the poems about Italian Cypresses are also both beautiful and moving.

Tuscan cypresses
What is it?

Folded in like a dark thought
For which the language is lost,
Tuscan cypresses,
Is there a great secret?
Are our words no good?

The undeliverable secret,
Dead with a dead race and a dead speech, and yet
Darkly monumental in you,
Etruscan cypresses...

Astonishing and unique. Some minor but still enjoyable verse interspersed between (in the pink "Penguin Poets" edition)

[Dane Cobain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the more interesting poetry collections that I’ve read of late – Lawrence, the man who’s best-known for Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Sons and Lovers, is an excellent poet, as well as a strong writer. Here, we watch him develop from a youngster who dabbled with rhyming poetry to a cynical old man, who wrote in free verse and used his art to show his disdain for the world.

In fact, I never knew that Lawrence was such a gifted poet, able to cover all sorts of subjects with a flair. I’ll leave you with one of his short poems, ‘New Houses, New Clothes‘, to illustrate my point:

New houses, new furniture, new streets, new clothes, new sheets
Everything new and machine-made sucks life out of us
And makes us cold, makes us lifeless
The more we have.

[Shachar · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars / 5 Stars

There were several cute poems in this collection that I loved, and I’m excited to read more of Lawrence’s work. I especially loved “Aware”, “Release”, “Piano”, “Seven Seals”, “Snake”, “How Beastly the Bourgeoisie”, and “The Ship of Death”. I’ve already bought copies of Sons and Lovers and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I really liked Lawrence’s prose and the way he strung words together. I probably could have done without the last like ten pages about Jesus and Christianity but wig. Great book of poems, a couple of slow poems that weren’t my speed but some great lines throughout nevertheless.

[Marshall A. Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read Lawrence’s Birds, Beasts and Flowers, and certainly enjoyed a few of the poems in it, but didn’t find his overall style to be particularly my favourite. Recently a friend was praising his prose writing style, which prompted me to attempt some more of his poetry and eventually some of his novels. There were again a few poems that I really enjoyed, but the majority of the rest of them didn’t tickle my fancy.

My favourite poems in this collection were:

Passing visit to Helen
Twenty years ago
Snake
Humming-bird
How beastly the bourgeois is
The mosquito knows
Beautiful old age
When the ripe fruit falls
Healing
City life
Terra incognita
The end, the beginning

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The darkness steals the forms of all the queens,
But oh, the palms of his two black hands are red
Inflamed with binding up the sheaves of the dead
Hours that were once all glory and all queens.

And I remember still the sunny hours
Of queens in hyacinth and skies of gold,
And morning singing where the woods are scrolled
And diapered above the chaunting flowers.

Here lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass:
The town is like a churchyard, all so still
And grey now night is here; nor will
Another torn red sunset come to pass.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel lucky that the used copy I have of this anthology is the revised edition (with 40 more poems) because there's nothing I would've wanted cut. I was as charmed by the youthful energy of the early poems as I was moved by the metaphysical ones at the end. A septet on tortoises midway was especially entertaining and deep. Not long ago, I went back to Lawrence's novel "The Plumed Serpent" and found it wanting; this collection has reestablished my belief that he's one of the greats.

[Ilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The celebrated poems about animals and plants didn’t appeal to me so much as the stuff from the 1910s that coincided with the writing of Lawrence’s greatest novels. There are some fun reflections on being a teacher, as well as childhood and young love. My favourite might be The Wild Common, where all of Lawrence’s exuberant description of the natural world is hooked to an exuberance about his bodily self.

[Vicente · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five star poems:
- Fish
- The rainbow

Other good poems:
- Snake
- Piano
- I wish I knew a woman

(This gorgeous old edition was found in my university's library. The collection could be better, though)

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lawrence is a fine poet and short story author, far better than most of his long novels. I particularly love his poems focussing on nature. Yes there is angst as in all his writing but there is also real observation of the human condition and humour!

[Jeannot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a wonderful experience. I enjoy reading something else from on author that I love. I have never ready poetry from him before. Some parts weren't my cup of tea, some I adored.

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really good poetry until he ruined himself with free verse. Dialect poetry is always awful, so I skipped that, and I stopped reading once he stopped writing actual verse.

[Theelmo26 · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love art, mid-century Disney movies and culture, and strong, creative women who push through barriers, you'll like this book!

[Tim Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

If men were as much men as lizards are lizards
they’d be worth looking at.