PHILIP LARKIN “why I write poetry”-20th century English literature, contexts, & writing style

20th CENTURY ENGLISH LITERATURE | Introduces & situates Philip Larkin’s poetry & poetic style in the literary context of mid-20th century writing culture & ‘The Movement’. What are the characteristics of Philip Larkin’s poetry & mid-20th century literature more generally? Reading & analysis of Philip Larkin’s BBC broadcast for the Overseas Service, on 20 August 1958, in which he explains his own poetic style, his writing’s aims & purposes, & “or why I write poetry”.
OUTLINE OF LECTURE
Background & Contexts
- introduction to Philip Larkin’s poetical style & his writing’s characteristics
- introduction to Philip Larkin’s mid-20th century literary contexts
- e.g. ‘The Movement’ of the 1950s
Why I Write Poetry
- reading & analysis of Philip Larkin’s BBC broadcast, 20 August 1958
- considers how Philip Larkin talked about his own poetic style, & the scope, purposes, & aims of his poetry
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[@DrOctaviaCox]

If you like the work I do on my channel, then you can support it here: www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=D8LSKGJP2NL4N Thank you for watching.

[@alibaqirlaghari9611]

Mam can u share notes of Larkin poetry characteristics

[@welshgruff]

Sorry, can't watch this as you wave your hands and head about all the time. Detracts from what you're saying, "kind of" !

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Let me know what you think of Larkin’s poetic style.

[@claratakken3671]

I love his poem: The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said Their recent buds relax and spread Their greenness is a kind of grief. Is it that they are born again? And we grow old? No, they die too, Their yearly trick of looking new Is written down in rings of grain. Yet, the unresting castles thresh In full-grown thickness every May, Last year is dead, they seem to say Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

[@renatanovato9460]

This analysis made it clear to me why i have turned to British classic literature during this pandemic.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

I love Larkin's wryness - the odd humour mixed with despondency. You're right, I think it does capture something very 'British'.

[@stephenkoritta9656]

Loving this analysis. Your lectures do, in their way, set off the perception of beutiful, the significant and the sad to, we, the listeners. You help me to expand my appreciation of the beauty of the Romantic poets. This lesson on Larkin leaves me hungry for more of your revelations on the significance and sadness twentieth century poets. On this day of days, 9/11, literary figures who grew up in the shadows of that catastrophe and the wars that followed have, if anything, broadly increased the volume of that cynicism and isolation to great effect. Their narratives are, as yet, unfinished and, therefore, beyond the purview of literary history. What you have shared about Larkin is really resonating and I see echoes of it in the poems and lyrics being written now. So interesting. Thanks, as always.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Such a poignant comment - thank you.

[@FredaM]

I very much appreciate your deep analyses and learn a lot and appreciate more deeply what I read. Thank you.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Thank you very much indeed for your kind comment. Helping others to appreciate their reading more deeply is exactly what I aim to do here on my channel. So I'm very happy to hear that.

[@lynneslates2136]

I’m fond of Larkin and I’m really happy to have listened to your words on his work. I feel like your examination of him helped me understand why I’ve loved his poems. Thanks!

[@stefano6605]

Thank you so much for your video, I'm writing a final essay about experience and time in relation to Larkin's "home is so sad,", Plath "mirror" and Keats "Ode on a grecian Urn", and this video is so helpful, many thanks!

[@superdollfie33]

This is fascinating, and I look forward to hearing what you say next about Larkin. Lots to think about!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Excellent! I'm glad you found it fascinating. I'll be releasing an analysis of Larkin's 'Nothing to be Said' shortly. A wonderfully complex but seemingly simple poem, which I hope you will also find interesting. Thanks for watching.

[@mch12311969]

My curiosity is piqued; I see I have a new genre to explore and I am not a poetry type of person. Thank you!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Larkin's poetry is wonderful, I think - poignant but unfussy - it's quite self-consciously un-'poetic'. 'This Be The Verse' is a fun one to start with!

[@mch12311969]

@@DrOctaviaCox I just listened to This Be The Verse, and was blown away.

[@flannerypedley840]

Yes, have a look at Larkin - very accessible but needs reading thorugh a few times to appreciate his greatness

[@bonniehagan9644]

So excited! Was sad not to see a video from you yesterday. Glad you're well. Can't wait to watch this newest installment.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Yes, I am well - thank you - I hope you enjoyed the newest instalment!

[@bonniehagan9644]

I have watched/listened to this video a couple times now. Philip Larkin was an unknown name to me prior to this. I was intrigued by your discussion regarding isolated observation and (paradoxically) sympathy or community of thought. Found some of Larkin's work and read/listened to "The Whitsun Weddings" and "Aubade". I'm not sure at this point how I feel. His poetry is evocative, certainly, and quite sobering. But I think that a deep dive into the bleak mood which seems to predominate might be...unsafe. But his poems belong! After all what is poetry of light without poetry of shadow?

[@bonniehagan9644]

And P.S. Thank you! I am delighted to be led by your literary lantern. Looking forward to next session as always!

[@jarrodsio]

tq Dr Cox. Larkin's one of my fave poets. hello from cambridge!

[@renatanovato9460]

So refreshing to listen about midcentury poetry.!

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Excellent. I have more Larkin on the way!

[@patriciaduncanjimenez6019]

I'm binge watching your videos, Dr. Cox. Thank you for your insightful analysis of my favorite novels. I look forward to rereading these books with my new knowledge. If I may, you often use the term "unpick" during your videos. Is that a British colloquialism? Americans use the word "unpack". (Personally, I prefer "unpicking" to "unpacking". It sounds far more interesting!)

[@hassannajh7698]

Thank you 🙏

[@JoannaParmenter-qg7iq]

I enjoyed your lecture, Dr Cox, thank you. However, as an educator myself, I would have liked to see more references to his poetry, with perhaps short extracts on screen, to illustrate your points. Students might struggle to remain focused and may not understand the relevance of your talk.

[@anat622]

Thanks!

[@michaeljortner440]

Greetings from Phoenix, Arizona! Dr. Cox, I always enjoy your video lectures. I’m a writer and I’ve learned much from you. 🙏🙏🙏🌵☀️⛰

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Greetings! Thank you - that's lovely to hear.

[@bethanyperry5337]

I was unfamiliar with Larkin until this and if not for your analysis I would have read through his poem “afternoons” without realizing that his intent was to provoke the emotion I felt. I found this quote of his that made me laugh. “Deprivation for me is what daffodils were for Wordsworth”. Thank you for being the least quotidian part of my week !

[@robertgainer1395]

Another excellent lecture, thank you. Sadly, the avoidance of writing about abstraction which made his work so relatable also limited his productivity. Not many poets have achieved such a reputation with so few poems, just four very slender volumes. (Keats is another poet who achieved wonders with just a few poems, though of course he died at 26). I’ve been reading Wallace Stevens recently, who ended his writing career in the 1950s. His approach was almost the antithesis of Larkin’s, with high levels of abstraction and imaginative philosophical musings, but little relation to the tangible. While I can appreciate the intellect and innovation of Stevens, his work leaves me cold. Larkin, however, is a poet to whom I can relate. We can be miserable old sods together when I read his poems, as in them I find a soulmate, which ironically cheers me up.

[@mr.arshadali1758]

Love from India

[@jamespaul7640]

Very pleasant to listen to your discussion. I see Mr Bleany living in a rented room, with no hook on the door, not taking the time to put up a little convenience that would serve as a place to hang his coat. That absence of initiative to muster a enough energy to perform a simple useful task is something you left out. But you nailed his style and it was wonderfully insightful. Thank you. Jim Buffalo N.Y.

[@karendoran6148]

Will you talk about Nabokov, particularly his style of writing?

[@flannerypedley840]

Can anyone recommend a text on The Movement or The Angry young Men?

[@nicholasleonard9770]

You should check out my poetry collection, ‘Nicholas Leonard In A Stairwell’. It’s full of introspective poems about heartbreak, identity, vampires and gothic things as such.21st century literature

[@donsharpe5786]

At school someone was asked to produce a poem, which they liked. Someone produced the poem of the frog. "What a wonderful bird the frog are. When he stand he sit almost, when he hop he fly almost. He ain't go no sense hardly; he ain't got no tail hardly either; when he sit he sit on what he ain't got almost". The teacher asked "Why do you like that poem" to which he replied "It's short!" A poem has to catch my imagination. I need to understand poetry or sing it and even then I might not understand it.

[@alibaqirlaghari9611]

Can anybody share characteristics of larkin poetry?

[@lisamayuri]

Hello Madam, Can you please make a detail video on 'Murder in the Cathedral'. Although the work is awesome at the same time it's uncanny, especially the speeches on spirituality... Please help me to get through this.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Hello Lisa, There is a really interesting video from the British Museum on Eliot's 'Murder in the Cathedral' which you might find helpful, here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iXWog6iZbq2qnc0 I also find listening to audio versions of verse dramas can be illuminating, and this one from 1968 captures the different voices well: archive.org/details/lp_murder-in-the-cathedral_t-s-eliot/disc1/01.01.+Part+I+Beginning.mp3

[@lisamayuri]

Thank you Ma'am

[@RaysDad]

Larkin is a new poet for me. Just now I read three poems: MCMXIV, Love Again, and Going. Also I read a bio of a few paragraphs that said Larkin graduated from university with honors, and his university was Oxford. So I'll grant he was probably intelligent even though his poems aren't overtly intellectual. His MCMXIV is a reaction to changes in British life brought on by WW1; the poem seems much too small for such a large topic, even for a narrow view from an ego-centric perspective. And the verse isn't pretty, or forceful, or clever...it simply proceeds until it is done. Maybe I'm missing something. So, I decided to read a love poem and chose Love Again solely on title. It isn't a love poem. Apparently Larkin was involved in a romance but didn't pursue it, and the poem describes his pubescent jealousy as his lady moves on to someone else. In the final stanza he attributes his lack of romantic commitment to a bad childhood. Yawn. Of the three poems I read Going seems by far the best. It has a nice image of evening coming from afar and being drawn over him like a blanket, yet it doesn't comfort him. The poet expresses confusion and I became confused as well when the poem ended without explaining even superficially the source of his distress. I'd call Going a fragment rather than a complete work.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

Fragment is an apt way to think about it - especially in terms of the subject matter of Larkin's poetry. Larkin's poetry could also aptly - and similarly - be described as 'occasional' in the C18th tradition of occasional verse, when 'Poems on Several Occasions' was the most popular volume title. The notion of occasional verse was that it was written piecemeal, as events or feelings occurred and struck one particularly - what might later have been called 'impressionistic'. There was no attempt to synthesise the pieces into a coherent whole, or necessarily to make some grand, broad, philosophical point (although there could be too). Lady Mary Chudleigh, outlines clearly what she understood occasional verse to be in her preface to her Poems on Several Occasions (1703): "The following Poems were written at several Times, and on several Subjects: If the Ladies, for whom they are chiefly designed, and to whose Service they are entirely devoted, happen to meet with any thing in them that is entertaining, I have all I am at. They were the Employment of my leisure Hours, the innocent Amusement of a solitary Life: In them they'll find a Picture of my Mind, my Sentiments all laid open to their View; they'll sometimes see me cheerful, pleased, sedate and quiet; at other times grieved, complaining, struggling with my Passions, blaming my self, endeavouring to pay a Homage to my Reason, and resolving for the future, with a decent Calmness, an unshaken Constancy, and a resigning Temper, to support all the Troubles, all the uneasinesses of Life, and then by unexpected Emergencies, unforeseen Disappointments, sudden and surprizing Turns of Fortune, discomposed, and shocked, till I have rallied my scattered Forces, got new Strength, and by making an unwearied Resistance, gained the better of my Afflictions, and restored my Mind to its former Tranquillity." Like Chudleigh, (it seems to me) Larkin aimed to articulate a feeling - a "Picture of my Mind, my Sentiments all laid open to their [readers'] View" - at a given moment. (Although Larkin seems to have felt "grieved" and "complaining" rather more, and "cheerful, pleased, sedate and quiet" rather less, than Chudleigh!)

[@RaysDad]

@@DrOctaviaCox Lady Mary Chudleigh is another new poet for me. I just read To the Ladies and it is delightful. Perhaps it can be called an occasional poem because her dissatisfaction with marriage was occasional. But the poem doesn't seem fragmentary. Her ideas are well-expressed, and her concise and imaginative couplets remind me of Pope. She has a genuine desire to be understood. Larkin seems reluctant to reveal too much.

[@DrOctaviaCox]

@@RaysDad That's a really fair point. And yes, you are absolutely right, Chudleigh (especially in 'To the Ladies') was clearly writing with an agenda (that she wanted to be clearly understood) - and to some extent was using the cover of the 'Occasional Verse' genre to downplay the seriousness of her intent. The style of her writing is, as you say, very much in the same style as Pope (they were contemporaries of the early 18th century & its poetic aesthetics). If you are interested in Chudleigh, then you might enjoy this video I made a while ago on her and this very poem: kzbin.info/www/bejne/m4mXZZ-DZ5aYd6s

[@DrOctaviaCox]

@@RaysDad Your phrase “Larkin seems reluctant to reveal too much” has got me thinking. I certainly think he is reluctant to commit himself too strongly to any particular stance or view or position. In this sense we might think of him adopting, perhaps, a kind of Keatsean ‘Negative Capability’, in which Larkin assumes a passivity that aims not to arrive at any fixed certainties. Larkin ends one of his most famous poems ‘Mr Bleaney’, for instance, with “I don’t know”. Keats’ phrase ‘Negative Capability’ appears in a letter to his brothers, Tom and George, dated 22 December 1817: “…several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason- [Samuel Taylor] Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge.”

[@RaysDad]

@@DrOctaviaCox Perhaps Negative Capability as described by Keats is related to the element of Prophecy described by E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel. I think both Negative Capability and Prophecy require the writer to make bold and heartfelt inquiries into the unfathomable that take the reader well beyond what Larkin achieves with his passivity.

[@flannerypedley840]

So to hear it said He walked out on the whole crowd Leaves me flushed and stirred, Like Then she undid her dress Or Take that you bastard; Surely I can, if he did?

[@donsharpe5786]

Perhaps, I should say "Why don't I write poetry". the answer is "Because most of what I write is rubbish".

[@dorothywillis1]

I just don't care for his work. Sorry!

[@catecoleman9852]

Agree. I prefer Frank O'Hara myself. Poetry is so personal, more so than fiction in my opinion. So many people don't have exposure to poetry or find it difficult to understand so I like to see it talked about even if it's not my jam.

[@donsharpe5786]

I find the Philip Larkin style pretentious. I understand where they are coming from? As someone who lived the life immediately after the 2nd world war, all we did was survived and didn't think about most issues. Food, what is a melon or banana, I haven't seen one before. Can I get a job. Worse still, I don't like the job where there is a constant industrial hooter dictating my every working hour.

[@mr.arshadali1758]

Love from India