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...