The Death of Aunt Alice

Thank you to Olivia for this one.

Death of Aunt Alice

At Caerleon

Thank you to Teresa

At Ogmore By Sea This August Evening

Thanks to Chelsea

At The Concert by Dannie Abse

Thank you to whoever sent me this one!

Sons by Dannie Abse

Thanks to Grace

Terrible Angels by Dannie Abse

Thank you to Sarah

Uncle Isidore by Dannie Abse

Thanks to Sophie for this one 

Letter from Ogmore by Dannie Abse

Thanks to Keira for this useful start to our revision:

Larkin poems about beliefs.

Here are my group's useful revision presentations about the short philosophical poems in "The Whitsun Weddings"  with some interesting links to an Abse poem in the volume "Welsh Retrospectives":

"Water" by Philip Larkin from ENSFCEnglish

"Nothing To Be Said" by Philip Larkin from ENSFCEnglish

"First Sight" by Philip Larkin from ENSFCEnglish

"Ignorance" by Philip Larkin from ENSFCEnglish

"Days" by Philip Larkin from ENSFCEnglish

"As Bad As A Mile" by Philip Larkin from ENSFCEnglish

Welcome New Bloggers!

Welcome to the new generation of bloggers recording their thoughts and reactions to Larkin's poems. I hope you will read each others' posts and comment on them if you find them useful or have anything you want to add.  You might even want to offer alternative opinions and interpretations on theirs.  After all this is exaclty what AO3(ii) is all about - being aware of other readers' interpretations!
First - here is the link to the 1960s programme about Larkin "Down Cemetery Road" which you have doodled about...

Next is a documentary made more recently about Larkin which offers a contemporary perspective on Larkin after his death...

and finally, here are some videos of Larkin reading his own poems.  You might want to add these to your own posts:

An Arundel Tomb:

Afternoons

For Sydney Bechet

The Whitsun Weddings

Characteristics of Larkin so far...

After reading 13 of Larkin's poems in the volume, here is a summary of what we think so far.  I've added my own ideas to yours. Please continue your own summary so far on your own blog:




Subject Matter

Contemporary (60s) life – observations on mundane details of life and people-watching

Place - rooted in real locations which have significance for Larkin

Time – Time slipping away.  Element of regret about life changing decisions – points at which life could change forever.

Youth - full of promise, hope and expectation for greatness

Expectations  - can lead to disappointments, unfulfilment - looking back with perspective

Age – he voices unsayable hatred of old age – perhaps shrouding fear of own ageing.

Death - inevitable, not to be feared

Change/Mutability – England is changing (not for the better) Present (“progress”) encroaching on older (better?) ways of life.

Family - relationships, loss, love - parents seen from middle-age

Love, Marriage and/or Sex – ability to see potential for greatness in marital union, but also base desire for sexual instinct to reproduce, difficulty of ultimate commitment - marriage a trap?

Life Choices - Fate or free will? – are lives products of our existential choices or determined by destiny, genes, our upbringing etc? Inevitability of age, regret etc.

Isolation - being an outsider, not conforming to the "norm"

Doubt - comparing self with others - who made the better life choices?

Hope – that out of something ritualistic or stripped of meaning or seemingly negative something good can come

Music/creative idols - passion for jazz - an escape, a "truth" in music.  Timeless - triggers memories of younger selves

Loss - of naivety, of loved ones, of youth

Attitudes expressed

Relationships, marriage love – against them personally (?) - they hold you back/tie you down? but aware that they do suit some people

Being alone – not a bad thing, but offers possibilities for greater clarity

Accept life decisions made - no point in regretting

Other people – rather negative and disparaging about their ignorance and lack of vision

Dislikes artificiality and falsity or show and pretence (modern life again) - a realist?

Against organised religion – cynical.

Hope expressed at end of poems – assertion of what’s good out of something which initially seems negative/mundane to him

Philosophical - big ideas about human existence, reflective

Melancholy, pessimism (?) - glass half-empty?

Atheist/agnostic ? - but knowledgeable about faith and belief in others

Speaker

First person (a persona not necessarily Larkin – make this clear)

An onlooker – isolated from what he observes but able to see it more clearly

Disparaging about those with “normal” lives

A somewhat superior tone, sometimes angry or bitter (?) 

Sometimes compassionate though and aware that other interpretations than his own have validity - he may be wrong

Reflective - introvert - nostalgic?

Structure of poems

Initially: Detailed concrete observation of everyday experience in often simpler language

Then: Movement towards less concrete more abstract and metaphoric observations with more overt judgements about what observing – more complex language

Finally: A more expansive philosophical observation on some part of human existence – usually 

paradoxical in nature. An 

epiphany at the end – a sudden realisation of a grand thought. Often ambiguous language or open-ended.

Rhyme, rhythm , structure varied from poem to poem – to suit individual poem’s ideas

Shows flexibility and virtuosity of poet

Style

Vocabulary – wide and varied, carefully chosen for connotations but sometimes reproduces colloquial, contemporary expressions.  Not specialist or archaic except for effect.  Can be very erudite and learned - huge scope of cultural allusion/reference

Technically very sophisticated:

Use of sound effects for emphasis (of eg speed, heat): alliteration, assonance

Use of connotative language

Use of cumulative listing devices to suggest weariness,

Use of compound adjective to collide ideas in efficient way

Use of rhetorical cadences (eg groups of threes) to reach crescendo or diminuendo

Sparing use of imagery when dealing with the abstract ideas reached by end of poem – metaphor, simile, personification, anthropomorphization

Sophisticated rhyming structures, but use of enjambment and caesura often hides them, deflecting monotony and communicating rhythms of everyday speech

Use of the conceit – metaphysical: a startling or unusual comparison which takes us onto a completely different level of ideas

Use of paradox and rhetorical devices which suggest paradox (oxymoron)

Use of bathos – anticlimax to suggest mundanity or humour or condescension

Use of pathetic fallacy – heat to suggest stifling repetition

Mr Bleaney

"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

Link to Philip Larkin reading Mr Bleaney

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?

Love and Death in Hull 2003

There is a more recent documentary about Larkin's life called Love and Death in Hull.  it was made after Larkin's death in 2003, so is a good overview of all his work.

Larkin on film

You might like to see this famous documentary, Monitor,  featuring Philip Larkin which was made in 1964.  In it, the poet is interviewed by John Betjeman (the poet laureate of the day) in a series of locations in and around Hull, and Wikipedia suggests the following:

(the programme) allowed Larkin to play a significant part in the creation of his own public persona; one he would prefer his readers to imagine.

It is in three parts on You Tube and you can play them one after the other.