"How we live measures our own nature"
- To what extent do you think this is true?
- How much do you think you can tell about someone from the kind of place they live in and the things they have in their home?
- What would your room tell us about you?
Here's an audio of Philip Larkin reading the poem himself
And you might like this which is a version of the poem with hyperlinks taking your to explanations and analyses of particular details in the poem.
Link to hypertext version of poem
Once you have studied the poem, consider what other critics have said about his poems:
'The typical structure of [Larkin's] poems ... [is] a debate between hope and hopelessness, between fulfillment and disappointment'.
Andrew Motion, 'Philip Larkin and Symbolism', in Philip Larkin: Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. by Stephen Regan (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1997), p. 43.
'Larkin sought out these uninspiring places because for him they weren't uninspiring but settings appropriate to the kind of poems he wrote'.
Alan Bennett, 'Alas! Deceived', in Writing Home (London: Faber & Faber, 1997 ed.), p. 565.
'[The] gaps and silences [in Larkin's work] hinted at deep and unresolved conflicts in the writer's private life'.
Stephen Regan, 'Larkin's Reputation', in Larkin with Poetry: English Association Conference Papers, ed. by Michael Baron (Leicester: English Association, 1997), p. 49.
'[Larkin] just couldn't connect ... Better to remain solitary, alienated, than to endure the pain of human entanglements'.
Terry Eagleton, quoted in Gary Kissick, 'They turn on Larkin', in 'The Antioch Review, Winter 1994'
'Larkin's poems seem to come to us very appealingly as the expression of a personality disclosing itself with self-deprecating honesty'
(from Andrew Swarbrick's essay 'Larkin's Identities', in Regan, Stephen ed. (1997) Philip Larkin: Contemporary Critical Essays, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
To what extent do you agree or disagree with their views of the poems you have studied so far?
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