The Repetitive, Meditative Style of Lawrences Birds, Beasts, and Flowe

The Repetitive, Meditative Style of Lawrences Birds, Beasts, and FlowersD. H. Lawrence is not a formalist. He derives his free verse style from prolonged get down with imaginative essays in which he objectively and vividly contemplates things, people, and places in their singleness rather than in their relationship to each other. Lawrences purpose, according to Gilbert, is knowledge through venture he essays to know something . . . intuitively . . . obliquely . . . fragmentarily not through orderly ratiocination, but through emotional perception. As his style developed, Lawrences essays became increasingly idiosyncratic, increasingly elliptical, instinctive and jazzy, as though reflecting the process rather than the product of thought. Gilbert finds Birds, Beasts, and Flowers, Lawrences sixth volume of poetry, written in a casual, improvisational, unfinished style that functions not scarce as a means of communication but also as a process of discovery (131-32). Building on G ilberts studies, an examination of Fruits, the first sequence of the nine-part Birds, Beasts, and Flowers, reveals that Lawrences repetitive, contemplative style employs three types of repetition. Fruits, an archetypal sequence about eating fruit and being changed by its magical properties, admits readers into Lawrences meditations and his Blakeian journey to the natural world (Gilbert 333). The poet/narrator tantalizes his dainty countrymen by suggestively dangling fruits that hold a secret that can be experienced with the senses, but cannot be grasped intellectually (Lockwood 105). Lawrence accomplishes his poetic journey through revisions of myths. The fount poem, Pomegranate, which alludes to the myth of Pers... ...h life with family and friends (Unterecker 241). Works CitedFrench, Roberts W. Lawrence and American numbers. The Legacy of D. H. Lawrence, Jeffrey Meyers, ed. New York St. Martins P, 1987. 109-34. Gilbert, Sandra M. Acts of Attention The Poems of D. H. L awrence. Carbondale Southern Illinois UP, 1990. Lawrence, D. H. Birds, Beasts, and Flowers. New York Thomas Seltzer, 1923. Lockwood, M. J. A Study of the Poems of D. H. Lawrence Thinking in Poetry. Houndsmills, England MacMillan P, 1987. Murfin, Ross C. The Poetry of D. H. Lawrence Texts and Contexts. Lincoln U of Nebraska P, 1983. Unterecker, John. Of Father, of Son On Fergus Falling, After Making Love We Hear Footsteps, and Angling, a Day. On the Poetry of Galway Kinnell The Wages of Dying, Howard Nelson, ed. Ann Arbor U of Michigan P, 1987. 227-41.