Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Poetry and Art

SABCL - Volume 27

Part 2. On His Own and Others’ Poetry
Section 2. On Poets and Poetry
Twentieth-Century Poetry

Lawrence [5]

Please take a look at this — form perfect as against its imperfect model. The formal perfection justifies my faith in rhyme, rhythm, etc. as against Lawrence’s free verse.

There can be no doubt of that. Lawrencists however would say that the question is not between imperfect and perfect metrical work, but between metrical rhythm in poetry and poetry stripped bare of metre and presented with a bare elemental energy of language, vision and movement. Theory for theory it can stand, but in the practice and result the effects seem to me to be against Lawrence’s theory.

1936