This timely book demonstrates the centrality of metaphor to Lawrence's radical sense of the constructed nature of all knowledge and his resulting belief in poetry as an alternative way of knowing. The book insightfully explains how Lawrence's most important volumes of poetry, Birds, Beasts and Flowers and Last Poems, shatter prevailing metaphors of «mechanism», Lawrence's shorthand for our reliance on the rational, the visual, and the empirical. It carefully explores the vibrant images of these poems and how they embed the poet's revolutionary views on knowledge. Despite his reputation, Lawrence's alternative system anticipates much contemporary feminist cultural criticism.