[HN Gopher] Larkin is a love poet who doesn't trust love
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Larkin is a love poet who doesn't trust love
Author : Caiero
Score : 45 points
Date : 2022-07-29 03:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newstatesman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newstatesman.com)
| Jun8 wrote:
| "I have never found Larkin an easy poet to like...".
|
| On the contrary, I've always loved him since I first read "Toads"
| in _Sound and Sense_ , a poetry anthology, in high school. I
| didn't understand all of it, but it felt close, maybe because
| something toad-like squatted in me, too. (Which was true, after
| nearly forty years from that encounter, I still haven't been able
| to say "Stuff your pension"!) He has a follow up to this poem,
| "Toads Revisited" that I don't like that much.
| sytelus wrote:
| More about Larkin: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/philip-
| larkin
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/l41G2
| nmyk wrote:
| Larkin is a poet who "comforts the disturbed and disturbs the
| comfortable." I often return to his poem Aubade [0], in
| particular the idea that "death is no different whined at than
| withstood," and that in the meantime, "work has to be done." Chop
| wood, carry water.
|
| [0]
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48422/aubade-56d229a6...
| thedailymail wrote:
| You need to be able to appreciate bleakness if you hope to enjoy
| Larkin. My favorite of his poems is Mr Bleaney, in which the
| speaker rents a cheap and depressing room and wonders if his
| predecessor (Mr Bleaney) thought about what ending up in such a
| room reveals about the life choices and character of the renter
| (with the implication that the speaker is asking himself the same
| question).
|
| Larkin packs a lot of bleakness into those 28 lines - highly
| recommended!
| ycombinete wrote:
| If you enjoy the bleakness of Larkin, I suggest reading John
| Cheever's journals. They've always felt to me like the Larkin-
| voice for the middle class of the same generation, in the USA.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| In that poem I love the description of the room as "one hired
| box" - always evokes a coffin in my mind.
| [deleted]
| vixen99 wrote:
| If you need even more, try Aubade.
| milkshakes wrote:
| 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.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Never heard of him. Is he usually this funny?
| Jun8 wrote:
| Sure, you usually see this poem in your LIT101 class or
| samesuch, agree with a snicker and move on.
|
| The terrifying clarity of these three stanzas are only grasped
| when you have children of your own.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I have four and I don't grasp the terror. He _is_ kidding,
| right?
| [deleted]
| krisoft wrote:
| Oh! I don't know how to say this without sounding super geeky:
|
| I didn't know before this article Larkin the poet. The only
| association I had with the name is that it was one of the names
| for a non-player character in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign
| (Critical Role, season 1x71)
|
| Now that might be just a coincidence, and maybe it is. The
| interesting thing is that the lack of trust was a central theme
| of that character. (The players didn't trust her, the character
| was actively betraying the trust of her compatriots, she had a
| different alias indicating that she is the Deceiver.)
|
| I'm wondering if maybe the association unconsciously affected the
| name choice of the dungeons master.
| deepdriver wrote:
| I had an entirely different association:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5657155/
|
| Cheeky inspiration for the Critical Roll character?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Larkin is like Shakespeare a core of English Literature
| education in the UK - most people in the UK will be intimately
| familiar with his work therefore.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Larkin isn't really becoming "high art." He's more like
| Kipling: a great poet, but too popular for scholars.
|
| Are really going to have students write reports on This Be
| the Verse?
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-
| ver...
| Angostura wrote:
| Interesting. I'm in the UK and was never shown any Larkin, as
| far as I know (I'm mid 50s). Neither of my daughters did
| Larkin (just finished secondary).
| bufordtwain wrote:
| Same here. It's not all bad though, I think a lot of
| Larkin's poetry can best be appreciated when you have a few
| years behind you and have had some of the same experiences
| as him.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Did you do English Literature?
| rikroots wrote:
| Same age (ish) here. I would have killed for the chance to
| read Larkin, or any 20th century poet, as part of the
| English syllabus. Instead I got to spend many, many hours
| grappling with Chaucer: A povre wydwe, somdeel stape in
| age, / Was whilom dwellyng in a narwe cotage, / Biside a
| grove, stondynge in a dale ...
|
| ... I failed my English Literature O Level.
| vixen99 wrote:
| But not so likely with the upcoming generation. The GCSE (a
| vital qualifying exam in the UK taken at more or less the US
| 10th grade level) syllabus has now been adjusted not to
| include Philip Larkin or Wilfrid Owen in a 'diversity drive'.
| Fair enough because not all great writers can be included in
| a crowded syllabus. I don't know who the replacement authors
| are but trust that they are of equivalent merit.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Some really fantastic stuff on the new curriculum by the
| likes of Fatimah Asghar, Zaffar Kunial and Ilya Kaminsky!
|
| I'm sure Larkin was a great addition in his day, with a
| much more contemporary style of writing than a lot of the
| older poetry that had the standard stuff before. Probably
| turned a lot of kids onto poetry who would have otherwise
| yawned at it. I'm hopeful that these new updates will have
| the same effect and have a lot more resonance with the
| younger generations.
|
| Agree with yourself that it's a pity to lose people like
| Larkin and Heaney but the replacements are very exciting
| indeed and those old names are so, so big that anyone who
| develops even a passing interest in poetry will surely run
| across them quickly.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| How could you possibly call what Asghar writes poetry?
| It's like someone was genuinely trying to prove that free
| verse means nothing. It's ok as prose, in parts.
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fatimah-
| asghar#tab-po...
|
| Zaffar Kunial likewise doesn't pay any visible attention
| to rhythm or metre or anything that might make what be
| writes poetry but at least he can write some evocative
| prose.
|
| https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poets/zaffar-kunial/
|
| Ilya Kaminsky likewise is the kind of "poet" that
| explains why poets have been off no importance in the
| Anglophone world since Ginsberg.
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ilya-kaminsky#tab-
| poe...
|
| Thank you. I needed that reminder of why no one cares
| about modern poetry. I do feel sad for the students who
| will be deprived of the chance to be exposed to poetry in
| the poetry section of their literature studies but all
| things pass.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| This is a very charged comment about very subjective
| things so I don't want to get into it too deeply.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean that no one has been of any
| importance since Ginsberg as that's absolutely not true.
| Heaney himself was in the generation after that, and
| there's been plenty since, Paul Muldoon, John Ashbury,
| Leontia Flynn, Ciaran Carson, Meadbh McGuckin, Sophie
| Collins, Dan Paterson, honestly the list goes on and on.
| These people have been hugely important in my life and in
| the lives of many people around me.
|
| People absolutely care about modern poetry and magazines
| like the Paris Review are in very high circulation.
| Beyond the confines of traditional print media I also see
| more and more people in the younger generation using
| platforms like Instagram to share original poetry. Sam
| Riviere is particularly notably there for having
| published his books first via Tumblr before they were
| collected and printed by Faber.
|
| I can sympathise with the idea that these poets might not
| be to your personal taste but to write whole generations
| off as unimportant because of that is a very self
| centered outlook.
|
| With regards to the poets on the new curriculum I
| personally find them very exciting and I think there's
| something to be said for kids being exposed to verse
| beyond rhyming iambic pentemeter written by people who
| look like them or come from less dominant cultural
| backgrounds like they themselves might do.
| xhevahir wrote:
| I'm not so optimistic about Larkin's replacements, whoever
| they are. I'm not British but it makes me sad to think that
| young people won't be shown "The Whitsun Weddings."
| archiepeach wrote:
| For anyone looking to explore poetry a bit further, I did create
| an app for this purpose. The design, development and curation of
| the app is all done by me. It's a react native app which I
| actually find hugely rewarding to work on (it provides me with a
| sense of purpose that my day job lacks).
|
| Anyway, exploring poetry has been fascinating and I truly urge
| anyone to do so if they have an interest in it. It's never time
| wasted.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/the-poetry-corner/id1602552624
| dang wrote:
| Currently discussed at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32285593
| [deleted]
| pyuser583 wrote:
| A lack of trust is pretty much the core of Larkin's work.
| ycombinete wrote:
| This is an interesting claim. I have not found lack of trust to
| be all that central to his work. I just had a flip through my
| copy of the Collected Poems, and none of the 30 or so
| bookmarked favourites feature trust.
|
| I would say that at the core, tying the various themes(sex,
| death, failure, general human misery) together are the
| sentiments of resignation, and resentment. The kind of
| resentment that grows out of powerlessness, and inevitability.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Thank you! I'll have to reread his work. I really love
| Larkin.
|
| What you're describing "sex, death, failure, general human
| misery, fueled by resentment grown out of powerlessness and
| inevitability" makes me think of Evelyn Waugh.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Definitely! I found this in Waugh's letters, which are
| fantastic. He is more wryly sardonic, and less bleak than
| Larkin.
| hnarn wrote:
| My first encounter with Larkin was "This be the verse" which is
| at this point iconic in my opinion, but the one that resonated
| with me the most is perhaps not as well known: "I remember, I
| remember".
|
| I read it soon after having moved for work to the other side of
| the world and struggling with why I felt so empty. There's many
| things to say about the poem, not least the for me very relatable
| disgust for your home town, but the final line hit me like a
| train when I read it:
|
| 'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'
|
| I remember feeling like an idiot. Of course I felt empty. What
| did I expect, that my life and me as a person would change just
| because I moved somewhere else?
|
| Others have interpreted this line cynically, but I don't, except
| perhaps in a strict optimistically cynical way: you have the same
| capability of winning or failing, feeling good or bad, feeling
| included or excluded, anywhere.
|
| As the line right before it says: I suppose it's not the place's
| fault.
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