Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert) | Kenneth Rexroth (essay date 1947)
Kenneth Rexroth (essay date 1947)
SOURCE: Rexroth, Kenneth. “The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence.” In D. H. Lawrence: A Collection of Criticism, edited by Leo Hamalian, pp. 118-32. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1973.
[In the following essay, first published as the introduction to a 1947 volume of Selected Poems by D. H. Lawrence, Rexroth notes the faults of the poet's many volumes but concludes that Lawrence's poetry is successful art.]
At the very beginning Lawrence belonged to a different order of being from the literary writers of his day. In 1912 he said: “I worship Christ, I worship Jehovah, I worship Pan, I worship Aphrodite. But I do not worship hands nailed and running with blood upon a cross, nor licentiousness, nor lust. I want them all, all the gods. They are all God. But I must serve in real love. If I take my whole passionate, spiritual and physical love to the woman who in turn loves me, that is how I serve...
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