Help needed. Please answer ASAP

[student_in_need]

Hi Everyone

I am new to this forum. I am studying english at higher level but i am kind of stuck with an essay i must write. I need to write about how D H Lawrence uses verse structure, imagery and word choice to explore the disadvantages of industrial progress. Help would be greatly appreciated. I am pasting a copy of the poem please help if you can:

IN THE CITIES

In the cities
there is even no more any weather
the weather in town is always benzine or else petrol fumes
lubricating oil, exhaust gas.

As over some dense marsh, the fumes
thicken, miasma, the fumes of the automobile
densely thicken in the cities.

In acienct Rome, down the thronged streets
no wheels might run, no insolent chariots.
Only the footsteps, footsteps
of people
and the gentle trottinf of the litter-bearers

In Minos, in Mycenae
in all the cities with lion agtes
the dead threaded the air, lingering
lingering in the earth's shadow
and learning towards the old hearth

In London, New Yorkm Paris
in the bursten cities
the dead tread heavily through the muddy air
through the mire of fumes
heavily, stepping weary on our hearts.

[mono]

Ah, I love D.H. Lawrence. All of his material, especially his poetry, never ceases to amaze me.
Lawrence, as you asked, almost never uses a set structure. His earlier poetry consists mostly of classical rhyme with congruent numbers of syllables, but, I think, as he aged, he used free verse more and more, no longer counting syllables, nor bothering with rhyme. Regardless of his style, his readers ALWAYS knew him of using many metaphors and similes, as he does in the poem you posted.
I began a thread some time ago, which I feel no one else enjoyed (*sigh), but I feel so happy that you may utilize it. He wrote the following essay, regarding poetry, and it would, most likely, answer many of your questions. The thread (just open the attachment):
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3282
Here is another thread on which I collected a few of his poems, both early and latter, that may further your experience in reading his material:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3050
Good luck!

[Isagel]

Mono - you are so very kind. I was about to post something about people here not helping with homework, so that the rest that usually writes that in mocking ways would not have to. Usually post like this raises an outcry from forum members, and the poor soul is teased. Now I have mentioned it, so you - you know who you are - do not have to tease this one. Go and posts your anger in the "vent here" thread. Be kind, it is Christmas.

I hereby declare Mono being an angel of virtue, and the Gandhi of the forum.

I have read your Lawrence thread Mono :-). I´m just slow in replying. I need to think.
It takes a while.

[mono]

Aww, gee, Isagel, thanks. Such compliments will make me immodest, he-he.
*covers his cheeks from blushing.

[Jay]

Reminds me of a quote I mentioned to a friend tonight, and is also so offtopic...
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
- Mark Twain

[subterranean]

I think in the general chat section we are allowed to hijack.....
So...


HIJACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm being an arse today coz i feel bored!

[Jay]

HiJaCkInG allowed? cool
*officially HiJaCkS the thread from SubT's rule* :D

[subterranean]

Are you bored too??

[Rumble]

Ah man my brain hurts! I haven't seriously dissected a poem in over a decade.

What I see here in his imagery and word choice is that industrialization has killed nature, replace it, removed its dignity. The weather is all fumes, the miasma (a Greek word, significant in this poem I think) is from machines rather than nature. In past noble societies, there was humanity and dignity in death (footsteps, trotting litter bearers). Machines were "insolent" but men ruled and the machines were kept at bay--which isn't the case any more in the author's industrial England.

The Lawrence goes back even further to ancient Greece. The dead are part of the world and remember it's pleasures (the hearth, a source of wood smoke). By contrast, modern ghosts are mired in muck and fumes. Even the dead have no peace, and they "stomp" in contrast to the earlier footsteps... the memory of their nobler times and our own lost dignity is signified in that they "step weary on our hearts."

This is just off the top of my head... what the heck do I know?! :D

[mono]

Very accurate, Rumble. Lawrence, in fact, claimed to hate the industrial revolution, due to its uneconomical replacement of jobs with machines, and that people had to perform less work, turning themselves into some routine-working automatons. The idea of references back to ancient Greece seems correct in your opinion too, where little art still survives, but what Lawrence feels fits under an entirely different genre of creation, as compared to industry.

[trismegistus]

HiJaCkInG allowed? cool
*officially HiJaCkS the thread from SubT's rule* :D
*Draws pistol from coat pocket*

Take this thread to Cuba!

[Jay]

Ah, good thing there's no coat nearby then ;) :D

[fayefaye]

lol, hehe..... HIJACK!!!!

[Jay]

Indeed *evil grin* :D

[student_in_need]

Guys Thanks you very much. It helped me in more ways than you could ever imagine. My most sinciere thanks to mono and rumble! Though by reading it i did gather that (After a lot of knit picking and reading between the lines) that he was only slightly agianst industrialisation. :p