A popuri post

As I discussed in my presentation in class D.H. Lawrence’s poetry was very diverse. Helen Sword (writer of my article) lays out a list of all other poets who can be compared to Lawrence when she says “[i]n his experimentation with free verse and his attention to poetic image as a concrete vehicle for abstract emotion, he resembles modernist contemporaries, such as Pound, Williams, H.D. and even Eliot. As an unabashed visionary, he fits into a Romantic lyrical tradition stretching from Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley through Whitman, Hopkins and Yeats. As a confessional poet, he forms a link in an unbroken chain that reaches from Whitman, Meredith, Hardy and Yeats through Robert Lowell, sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. And as a careful observer and awed explicator of nature, he finds common ground not only with twentieth-century ‘thing-poets’ such as Williams, marianne Moore, Rainer maria Rilke and Francis Ponge, but also with more recent writers such as Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes” (Sword 120). We are familiar with some of the mentioned poets so we can match up the styles that she’s discussing.

One poet that we recently discussed was H.D. She wrote some Imagism poetry, which we learned was short, described an action and painted a very focused picture. One of these poems was called Oread:

Whirl up, sea-

Whirl your pointed pines,

Splash your great pines

On our rocks,

Hurl your green over us,

Cover us with your pools of fir.

Oread is a nymph of the mountains and in this we are given imagery of water and mountains which I find really weird. I’m not too sure I enjoy Imagism, from what I’ve read. I’m disappointed to say... I don’t really enjoy H.D. Although I don’t like lengthy poetry, I don’t like short and abrupt poetry either. I guess I’m difficult to please.

The next poet on the list is W.H. Auden, who writes an array of different poems. His mix of different styles and subject matters makes it difficult to not find something you like. With such a selection, you are bound to find something. For me, there were a few. One of them was “The Shield of Achilles.” I’ve mentioned a few times before that I enjoy mythology. Although this poem isn’t difficult, it isn’t easy- you do have to put some thought behind it.