A Doggy Demos: Hardy & Lawrence

Abstract

[…] It is generally agreed, however, that Lawrence’s verse, where it is memorable and successful, is almost all written in his own version of that vers libre which Hardy had declared “would come to nothing in England.” In fact, it is hard to see the presence of Hardy behind any of Lawrence’s worthwhile poems. And we cannot even be sure that it was Hardy who steered Lawrence, as for good or ill he steered Sassoon and Blunden, away from Eliot’s and Pound’s poetry of the ironical persona.