Philip Larkin (1922-1985) is known today for his self deprecatingly humorous or cynical poems. He was born in Coventry, England. Although he calimed to be a happy child, he was painfully shy due to his bad sight (which went undiscovered for some time) and stammering. He went to Oxford and published poems in magazines there. Afterwards, he became a librarian at Shropshire after graduating with an English degree with high honors. In 1955 he moved to Hull to become university librarian at Brynmor Jones Library, where he became the Larkin we know today – the Larkin who never attended literary circles and poetry readings. In his poetry, he distanced himself from clichés and euphemisms that Eliot and other modernists used. He often used crude or “real” language, per se – sometimes including swear words in his poems. Larkin had a way of evoking raw emotion through his harsh language and cynical themes.
All information comes from:
Poetry Criticism. Ed. Carol T. Gaffke and Anna J. Sheets. Vol. 21. Detroit: Gale, 1998. p220-260.
3 comments:
Here is a link to "The Whitsun Weddings," as the poem was too long to post here.
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/philip-larkin/the-whitsun-weddings/
I find the affinity Larkin creates between funerals and weddings to be quite interesting in the poem. Some lines struck out at me (and this is a response I have often to Larkin poems), the most sharp line being, “Just long enough to settle hats and say/ I nearly died.” Another couple lines I find liked are
“and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.”
Larkin talks about the universality of life and death – how everyone goes through the same experience, yet no one understands it that way. People pay more attention to the differences they have.
Sad Steps
Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.
Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,
The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)
High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,
One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare
Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.
This is a poem that demonstrates what I love about Larkin’s poems. He begins with a sarcasm, laughing at the sky, and soon comes to the realization that he cannot laugh it off, that he is alone and miserable. This poem makes me both laugh and shiver – it is well written.
The Building
Higher than the handsomest hotel
The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,
All round it close-ribbed streets rise and fall
Like a great sigh out of the last century.
The porters are scruffy; what keep drawing up
At the entrance are not taxis; and in the hall
As well as creepers hangs a frightening smell.
There are paperbacks, and tea at so much a cup,
Like an airport lounge, but those who tamely sit
On rows of steel chairs turning the ripped mags
Haven't come far. More like a local bus.
These outdoor clothes and half-filled shopping-bags
And faces restless and resigned, although
Every few minutes comes a kind of nurse
To fetch someone away: the rest refit
Cups back to saucers, cough, or glance below
Seats for dropped gloves or cards. Humans, caught
On ground curiously neutral, homes and names
Suddenly in abeyance; some are young,
Some old, but most at that vague age that claims
The end of choice, the last of hope; and all
Here to confess that something has gone wrong.
It must be error of a serious sort,
For see how many floors it needs, how tall
It's grown by now, and how much money goes
In trying to correct it. See the time,
Half-past eleven on a working day,
And these picked out of it; see, as they c1imb
To their appointed levels, how their eyes
Go to each other, guessing; on the way
Someone's wheeled past, in washed-to-rags ward clothes:
They see him, too. They're quiet. To realise
This new thing held in common makes them quiet,
For past these doors are rooms, and rooms past those,
And more rooms yet, each one further off
And harder to return from; and who knows
Which he will see, and when? For the moment, wait,
Look down at the yard. Outside seems old enough:
Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by it
Out to the car park, free. Then, past the gate,
Traffic; a locked church; short terraced streets
Where kids chalk games, and girls with hair-dos fetch
Their separates from the cleaners - O world,
Your loves, your chances, are beyond the stretch
Of any hand from here! And so, unreal
A touching dream to which we all are lulled
But wake from separately. In it, conceits
And self-protecting ignorance congeal
To carry life, collapsing only when
Called to these corridors (for now once more
The nurse beckons -). Each gets up and goes
At last. Some will be out by lunch, or four;
Others, not knowing it, have come to join
The unseen congregations whose white rows
Lie set apart above - women, men;
Old, young; crude facets of the only coin
This place accepts. All know they are going to die.
Not yet, perhaps not here, but in the end,
And somewhere like this. That is what it means,
This clean-sliced cliff; a struggle to transcend
The thought of dying, for unless its powers
Outbuild cathedrals nothing contravenes
The coming dark, though crowds each evening try
With wasteful, weak, propitiatory flowers.
What makes this poem fun to read – aside from the sharp, concrete imagery Larkin provides – is the seeming ease with which Larkin rhymes. The poem’s rhymes are subtle due to the enjambments, but the rhymes are there nevertheless – regular and flawless. Larkin uses the “language really used by man” (as Wordsworth called it), while still maintaining a piece of old structure.
Post a Comment