New at the time, that is - because one of the other striking things about Lawrence's poetry is how fertile a growth point it became for later writers - Ted Hughes, especially. Not only did Hughes learn a great deal from Lawrence's way of seeing, he also adapted his long lines, and note-taking style (in Moortown Diary, especially), and so licensed a style that might be described as the opposite of Larkin's other-English tradition. Its rawness can sometimes be too bloody for its own good, its formal freedom can easily become slack, its relentless attention to things-in-themselves can hinder the philosophic mind. But on a good day - and there are plenty of good days - it has quite phenomenal energy and excitement.

If Worthen had held us among Lawrence's poems for a little longer, and at a greater depth, he would have done his man a favour. As he would also have done if he'd explored certain subjects that are common to both Lawrence and Hughes. Not just the subject of animals, but that of the environment in general. For years at the end of the last century, Lawrence's "phallic consciousness" gripped popular and critical attention. If we gave that a rest for a while and looked at his eco-consciousness instead, we'd find that Lawrence was just as far ahead of the game in this respect as in others.

His poems about bats, snakes, bugs, flowers, swifts are not just brilliant evocations of those creatures. They express a gigantic network of sympathies, held together in an extraordinary focus of concentration. In the old days, this was generally liked but downgraded as "nature writing". Now that we think differently about the planet, and the community of species we share it with, we should raise Lawrence's contribution to the high position it deserves.