2 h 53 minAudiobook9 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What changes when a fig, a mosquito and a snake stop being scenery and demand your attention?
In Birds, Beasts and Flowers, D. H. Lawrence meets the natural world as something alive, strange and full of mystery. This collection of poems moves from pomegranates, peaches and figs to trees, flowers, reptiles, birds and beasts. He talks to a fig, scolds a mosquito and bows before a snake: each encounter challenges the habit of putting human life first.
Lawrence writes in loose, speaking free verse, with lines that stretch or shorten as his thoughts move. A baby tortoise makes its first small crawl; a turkey cock struts with ancient pride. Fruit becomes bodily and strange, while trees and flowers hold a quieter life. Throughout, the poems ask what we lose when we treat nature as a backdrop.
What you’ll discover
- Fruit with hidden depths Meet pomegranates, peaches and figs in poems that make familiar fruit feel strange.
- A snake commands respect Follow an encounter that brings a human speaker face to face with another creature’s mystery.
- The tortoise’s small beginning Watch a baby tortoise crawl into poems attentive to its separate, unfamiliar life.
- Trees and flowers grow quieter Enter a gentler mood without losing the strong feeling that runs through these poems.
- Thought becomes living speech Feel free verse follow a thinking voice, without neat rhyme or regular lines.
Who will love it
For readers who love poems that sound like a person thinking aloud, and anyone drawn to nature writing with a sharp, odd edge.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Poems written on the road
- Fruits are bodies, and bodies are strange
- Trees and flowers hold hidden life
- Creatures that unsettle the human mind
- The New World brings larger beasts
- A voice built for reading aloud
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- Audiobook
- 2 h 53 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Oiseaux, bêtes et fleurs
by D. H. Lawrence · 1923
Lawrence bows before a snake and asks what we lose when we treat nature as scenery.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Birds, Beasts and Flowers is a book of poems by D. H.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Poems written on the road
Lawrence left England soon after the First World War. He felt shut out by a country that had banned his novel The Rainbow and had treated him with suspicion during the war years. He and Frieda went looking for a place where life felt fuller and less cramped.
The poems follow that search. Many were written in Tuscany and Sicily, where the climate and old landscapes gave him fruit, almond trees and cyclamens close at hand. Others come from later stops, including Australia and the American Southwest. The book is a kind of travel diary in which the chief subject is whatever living thing happens to stand in front of him.
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What is Birds, Beasts and Flowers about?
It is a collection of poems in which D. H. Lawrence looks closely at fruit, trees, flowers, reptiles, birds and animals. He treats each as a living presence and uses them to think about the body, desire, death and the sacred.
When was Birds, Beasts and Flowers written and published?
Lawrence wrote most of the poems between 1920 and 1923 while travelling through Italy, Sicily, Germany, Ceylon, Australia and the United States. The book was first published in 1923.
What is the poem Snake about?
Snake describes a man who finds a snake drinking at his water trough in Sicily. He feels both fear and respect, and the poem explores that conflict between learned habit and a deeper sense of honour.
The author
D. H. Lawrence
1885–1930 · English novelist and poet
D. H. Lawrence was an English novelist and poet, among the most controversial and influential writers of the early twentieth century. Lady Chatterley's Lover, long banned for its frankness, became a landmark in the fight against literary censorship.
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