Birds, Beasts and Flowers: Poems

D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) made a contribution to poetry that, in the words of Louise Bogan, "can now be recognized as one of the most important, in any language, of our time." Birds, Beasts and Flowers, his first great experiment in free verse, was published when he was thirty-eight. This Black Sparrow edition re-sets the text in the format of the first edition (New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1923) and restores several "indecent" lines suppressed by the original publisher. Lawrence's original jacket artwork is reproduced on the jacket in full color. Many of these individual poems are popular in anthologies, however they are best read in the context and continuum of the whole book. In preparing the original collection for publication, Lawrence grouped the poems in a purposeful sequence and prefaced many of the sub-sections with brief quotations from the third edition of John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, which particularly interested him at the time.