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Anyone like Philip Larkin?

T

Thick_as_a_Planck

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 6, 2006
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366
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Italy
He's my favourite poet. Here's one by him, I hope you enjoy it.

If hands could free you, heart,
Where would you fly?
Far, far beyond every part
Of earth this running sky
Makes desolate? Would you cross
City and hill and sea,
If hands could set you free?

I would not lift the latch;
For I could run
Through fields, pit-valleys, catch
All beauty under the sun--
Still end in loss:
I should find no bent arm, no bed
To rest my head.
 
Actually I've been reading a lot of Larkin lately. Fascinating character... through his poetry he portrays himself as an inveterate fatalist / pessimist, but some critics argue that towards the end of his career he was just playing up to the public persona he'd crafted. Although certainly, like many of the leading literary figures of his generation, there was a dark underbelly to his talents.

The Whitsun Weddings is one of the most brilliant collections of poetry I've read. Here are a couple of poems from it:


Talking in Bed

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.



A Study of Reading Habits

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who's yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.
 
Awesome! I knew there'd be at least one other Larkin fan here. I agree with you on the WW, though I prefer High Windows, I think. Which one is Sad Steps in? That has to be one of my favourites. I love the way he (in typical Larkin style) starts with something so ordinary 'stumbling back to bed after a piss' and yet ends with a masterful insight into human nature, stopping on the way only to sarcastically mock other poet's interpretations of the moon 'lozenge of love' before he gives his own. Amazing. I think he has that thing that few artists ever have: the ability to see when he writing needs to be beautiful and when just to write normally, almost banally. The contrast and the ironic view on life it gives him lead to some incredible things.

Also, he died the same year I was born, which isn't important but I think it's a nice coincidence.
 
How can this thread exist and not contain This Be The Verse? Even Lemony Snicket knows this piece.


This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin
 
I'm a big fan, I think this one is my favourite. depressing but brilliant.


Mr Bleaney


'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, no room for books or bags -
'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try

Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits - what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why

He kept on plugging at the four aways -
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.

Philip Larkin
 
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