Philip Larkin was a British poet and novelist who is known for his bleak, cynical, and often controversial views on life and society. Born in 1922 in Coventry, England, Larkin was the son of a city treasurer and a schoolteacher. He was educated at Oxford University, where he studied English literature and became interested in modernist poetry.
Larkin's poetry is characterized by its use of simple, straightforward language and its focus on mundane, everyday subjects. His work often deals with themes of loss, isolation, and the futility of human endeavors. Larkin was a master of the "less is more" approach to poetry, and his work is known for its economy of language and its ability to convey complex emotions with a few well-chosen words.
One of Larkin's most famous poems is "Here," which was published in his 1964 collection "The Whitsun Weddings." The poem is set in a cemetery, and it reflects on the impermanence of life and the futility of human endeavors. Larkin writes:
"Here, where the ancient olive trees
Stand guard and claim the soil,
Here where the long connection cuts
Across an empty land,
Here, where the graves are crowded
Under marble and the grass,
Here is the dead land,
This is the land the living forget."
The poem is a powerful meditation on death and the human condition, and it speaks to the sense of loss and isolation that many people feel in the face of mortality. Larkin's use of simple, straightforward language and his focus on the everyday details of life help to make the poem relatable and universal, and it has become one of his most popular and enduring works.
Overall, Philip Larkin's poetry is known for its honesty, its simplicity, and its ability to speak to the human experience in a deeply authentic way. His work is a testament to the enduring power of poetry to shed light on the complexities and contradictions of the human condition.
Patty Larkin
Works Cited Larkin, Philip. The first stanza is given a rhyme scheme of ABABCDDC. This results in an overall message echoing his views towards life and society. Although it is not easy to notice, the poem does contain a specific rhyme pattern. It is as if this place where nothing much is happening and there is little of note to see is the last place one would expect to find a built-up urban settlement.
To add to the contrast, Larkin lists elements of the town domes and statues. In the last two lines, Larkin further explores the beauty of the countryside. Philip Larkin was an English poet, who is known for his realistic and often depressing poems about everyday life. First, I just want to give a little background information on him. Larkin touches on the idea of loneliness again between the third and fourth stanzas. The poet is himself in a mood of despondency and misery and says that he falls upon the thorns of life and is bleeding. This long sentence juxtaposes the sudden short, monosyllabic sentence in the 3 pages, 1096 words The Road Not Taken" I chose to do a poetry explication on Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken.
However, because Larkin carefully avoids using any kind of pronoun within the text of the poem, we cannot be entirely sure whether this speaker is male or female nor can we understand where this elusive speaker might be within the context of the scene. The final stanza sees the speaker come to a realization that he may never find what he is looking for. Such subtle effects serve to avoid the possible monotony of the straightforward list, and to give variety and movement to a poem from which, as already mentioned, the poet has deliberately effaced the personal point of view. Order custom essay Critical Analysis of Here by Philip Larkin with free plagiarism report On three different occasions the word is used; each time to the same effect. In the first stanza, and indeed in the whole poem, there is a clear theme of the industrialized world interrupting the natural, rural world. In the second stanza, Larkin describes the town, which shows that Larkin is near the ND of his journey. It is undeniably partly due to the mastery of its structure and the wonderful sense of balance that the poet manages to maintain.
In his description of the town, he manages to achieve a highly effective blend of the generalised and the particular. Larkin is also telling the reader the time period in which he is writing in, "grim head-scarred wives", generally worn by working class women; however the word grim puts a more depressing look on things. At the end of the first stanza, Larkin uses a mixture of impressions to describe the nature around him, "gold clouds" and "shining gull marked mud". It is clearly another train-journey that is being described but we have no sense that the narrator is an actual passenger on the train. As well as literally denoting the vast sea beyond the land, this might also be analysed as a reference to the great unknown, death. In every stanza he talks about different bells, and what noises they make, and for. The ultimate transcendence of unfenced existence is always just at our feet, but as soon as we dare to take a step, it retreats into the distance again.
The last stanza is different to the previous stanzas because Larkin talks about cosmically and elemental objects rather than the materialistic objects by describing the sea, sun, flowers instead of plate glassed doors and flat faced trellises. The format of the poem also serves to create a sense of isolation and disconnection. Apart from his academic interests he has published four thrillers, set in England and Italy, and he has written and regularly updates the sightseeing pages for the Time Out Guide to Venice. . It could show how Larkin looks down on them and feels as though he is better than them which is negative, however, it could be portrayed as though Larkin is admiring their lifestyle in a nicer, positive way. This contrast in sentence length is symbolic of the journey, which is enhanced by the use of iambic pentameter throughout the poem. There is a rhyming scheme used throughout this poem which is very subtle and consist of very few perfect rhymes and more half rhymes.
The final line of the poem is open to interpretation. But it is lightening that does the work. However, it is not the traditional, vehicular sort of movement; trains and cars do not swerve. Larkin starts the poem with a description of the cityscape and how it changes as the train moves away from London. But all of the signs of a city or town are there: domes and spires, cranes, estates — and, towards the end of this stanza, a description of the local supermarket and other stores where the residents of the town can purchase all the things they need. Balance', where a man used to live in a flat by himself with only the bare essentials in it. Larkin here uses one of his most striking enjambments, bringing this 24-line sentence to a conclusion in the opening line of the fourth stanza; he uses not only enjambment but a carefully placed poetic inversion, leaving the object of the final verb stranded in stanza three, while the subject and verb form the first half of the first line of stanza four: +++And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges +++Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges, +++Isolate villages, where removed lives +++Loneliness clarifies.
We get the impression that Larkin does not like the advancement and change occurring in the town. Also the list of different items t the end of stanza 2 show the boom in Britain after the Second World War with new technologies and the explosion of materialism. Yes, the first three stanzas and the first two words of the fourth stanza have all been one long sentence comprising lots of clauses separated by commas, colons, and semi-colons. Another contrast between the rural and urban settings of the poem is the differing types of movement. The postmodern age is full of contradictions in that people are brought intimately close together through the media of the internet and high speed transportation even as they are pushed further apart by the confusing and conflicting demands on their time and attention. In the third stanza, Larkin presents an almost entirely negative list of images that he associates with the town; in fact, each list is almost a spontaneous word-association game for Larkin.
These images are marred somewhat by the traffic and workmen, and ultimately the town which emerges in the second stanza. It shows that he started his journey where the river was thin and at its source and has followed the winding path to its mouth. By containing the first three stanzas within one sentence, Larkin creates a sensation of the reader travelling with him on the train. Larkin is using this mixture of positive words to describe a negative scene to portray a kind of beauty, Larkin tells the reader how it is, he is an observer. .
