young love. At the seaside "Everything crowds under the low horizon: / Steep beach, blue water, towels, read bathing caps, / The small hushed waves' repeated fre...
young love. At the seaside "Everything crowds under the low horizon: / Steep beach, blue water, towels, read bathing caps, / The small hushed waves' repeated fresh collapse / Up the warm yellow sand". There's an almost Shakespearian obsession with ageing and passing time in the poems collected inHigh Windows. "What do they think has happened, the old fools, to make them like this?…Why aren't they screaming?" Larkin asks of the elderly. His answer: "Well, we shall find out." In the titular poem he watches young lovers and wonders "if anyone looked at me, forty years back, and thought,That'll be the life". But it's hard to see into the future or the past: you have to strain, as if looking through a high window, and even then you may only get a glimpse of light through the "sun-comprehending glass."High Windowswas first published in 1974 and some critics disliked Larkin's work for its lack of experiment and familiar subject matter. Yet even at its most traditional, Larkin's writing can be striking as, in "This Be The Verse", it encapsulates prosaic truths with plain language and gentle wit:They fuck you up, your mum and dad.They may not mean to but they do.They fill you with the faults they hadAnd add some extra, just for you.--Tamsin Todd
Advantages: Profound but down to Earth - a poetic genius... Disadvantages: You'll either love him or hate him!
...PhilipLarkin, an insight into the genius, the poet, the man…
I have to admit that when I first started to study Larkin for my A – levels, it was difficult not to curse him, let alone like him! On the surface, Larkin appears to be a misogynistic and sexist man with a supercilious eye for anything lower class. This, unfortunately has become the most popular attitude towards Larkin, however, I feel that this is not the case. After having studied only the poetry, it would be, I admit, easy to criticise Larkin, but you must go deeper than the words on the page in order to understand this mysterious but incredible writer, and that is what I intend to help people to do…
General Background:
PhilipLarkin was born in 1922 in Coventry. He grew up there and went to read English at Oxford University. For the remaining thirty years of his...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: thought provoking, easy to read. Disadvantages: highly pessimistic so don't expect laughs.
...Many people say that PhilipLarkin is some sort of Pessimistic monster that produced merely sad poems. I disagree.
A lot of the poems are actually very philiosophical and I urge everyone to read this particular anthology which is called "The Whitsun Weddings," named after a poem in the anothology itself.
The collection is one of three main anothology's and is highly rated amongst the best. The "Times Literary Supplement" think it isa worthwhile read also. It is a set text on the WJEC A level board so is a book of high reputation amongst the exam boards.
One good thing for those "flickers" out there is that it is easily skimmable. It is a very short anthology consisting of only around 32 poems. There are a couple of his most famous such as "Ambulances" and "Dockery and Son".
Main Themes
Reflection
Larkin, described...
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Advantages: Interesting and unique, superb writing and characters Disadvantages: Not for you if you prefer plot to character-driven stories
...PhilipLarkin is best-known for his poetry, although he wrote two novels: A Girl In Winter and Jill, both written in his mid-twenties. He was an interesting character, said to be obsessed with pornography and racist, although Martin Amis (Larkin was a close friend of Kingsley Amis) denies this. I was surprised to discover that Larkin was also a Jazz critic and a great fan of Thomas Hardy's poetry, and was instrumental in the re-evaluation of Hardy's poetry, which tends to be ignored in favour of his novels - despite Hardy seeing himself as a poet foremost, an author second. His being a fellow fan of Hardy, I softened to him slightly…
I studied The Whitsun Weddings (Larkin's most famous collection of poetry) at college and, although I could appreciate their superb structure and sharp insights, he was never going to be my favourite...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
helpful 08.12.2006
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