Philip Larkin [1922 - 1985]

[Bach]

Here's a pleasant environment to discuss the great man and his works.

Here's a wonderfully ambiguous extract to whet your appetite.

'...We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.'

[quasimodo1]

ON BEING TWENTY-SIX

I feared these present years,

The middle twenties,
When deftness disappears,
And each event is
Freighted with a source-encrusting doubt,

And turned to drought.

I thought: this pristine drive

Is sure to flag
At twenty-four or -five;
And now the slag
Of burnt-out childhood proves that I was right.

What caught alight

Quickly consumed in me,

As I foresaw.
Talent, felicity—
These things withdraw,
And are succeeded by a dingier crop

That come to stop;

Or else, certainty gone,

Perhaps the rest,
Tarnishing, linger on
As second-best.
Fabric of fallen minarets is trash.

And in the ash

Of what has pleased and passed ... {excerpt}


{ http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=178043 }

[Pecksie]

I absolutely adore Larkin. Some people have criticized his pessimism and hopelessness, but I think he has an uncanny ability for depicting 'moments of being' and for conveying moods and scenarios...

And his poem 'An Arundel Tomb' (one of my all-time favourites) is nothing if not a song to the endurance of human love.

[Bach]

Or is it, though? That's debatable.

[Pecksie]

Or is it, though? That's debatable.

He he... well that's how I choose to read it... although I admit there's a lot of irony in Larkin... he may have been trying to tell exactly the opposite... (there's a good analysis of the poem somewhere in the Net).

[lam80]

Hello Pecksie,
I guess we are two to agree that despite what he wants to convey and make us believe of him, Larkin's poetry is full of Romanticism, and this is what I'm working on, and need help to support my opinion.
Espero que puedes ayudarme,
Gracias de antemano.

[quasimodo1]

An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.


Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.


They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.


They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they


Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,


Washing at their identity. ...{excerpt}