Philip Larkin - Broadview Press Publisher's Blog

Philip Larkin
Possible Lines of Approach
Larkin and modernism
Larkin and controversy
Notes on Approaching Particular Works
“Talking in Bed”
“Annus Mirabilis”
“This Be the Verse”
“Aubade”
Questions for Discussion
Critical Viewpoints/Reception History
Possible Lines of Approach
Larkin and modernism
Larkin is seen by most critics as decidedly anti-modernist. Simon Petch notes that Larkin
had professed admiration for John Betjeman, whom he described as “a poet for whom the
modern poetic revolution has simply not taken place,” and referred to modernism as “the
aberration … that blighted all the arts” (The Art of Philip Larkin [Australia: Sydney
University Press, 1981]). Decrying the cold intellectualism of Eliot and Pound, Larkin
instead stressed his desire to write in “the language of ordinary people.”
One possibility then is to consider Larkin’s poetry as a reaction against the excesses of
modernism, against its allusions and impenetrability. In a rare interview, published in the
March 31, 1973 edition of the Guardian, Larkin explained his poetic practice by
emphasizing that it “cuts out obscurity, it cuts out references to literature and mythology
which you cannot be sure readers may know. It means you are writing fairly simply in the
language of ordinary people, using the accepted sense of words and using the accepted
grammatical constructions.” In taking this approach, you might want to ask students to
consider how Larkin fits into the definitions of poetry they may be working with,
particularly those definitions inspired by modernist poetry. Is Larkin’s subject matter the
stuff of poetry? Is his language—often coarse, sometimes profane—appropriate to the
genre? And, is it, ultimately “the language of ordinary people”?
At the same time, you might find it profitable to acknowledge that Larkin’s style is far
more complicated than he may have wished to acknowledge. His poetry does, ultimately,
allude, does make reference to history outside itself. He is, undoubtedly, influenced by
Thomas Hardy—a poet Larkin himself identifies as un-modern, though many scholars
would beg to differ—and thus a part of the poetic tradition, not exactly the outsider he
imagines himself to be. Note too that Larkin makes use of traditional forms, of traditional
meter, writing poetry that is often (self)consciously poetic.

Ask students, too, to think through the implications of “ordinary language.” Can language
ever really be ordinary? That is, do all “ordinary people” speak the same “ordinary”
language?
Larkin and controversy
The posthumous publication of Larkin’s letters set off a minor storm of controversy, as
the correspondence shed an unflattering, alarming light on Larkin’s personal beliefs,
opinions, attitudes, and pleasures. The publication of Andrew Motion’s Philip Larkin: A
Writer’s Life (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993) only increased the attack. The poet and
critic Tom Paulin labeled Larkin’s letters a “revolting compilation which imperfectly
reveals and conceals the sewer under the national monument Larkin became.” Other
writers—perhaps most notably Martin Amis, the son of Kingsley Amis, one of the
recipients of Larkin’s letters—came to the poet’s defense, arguing that his personal
prejudices, his racism and sexism, matter little in the final analysis of his work.
The controversy presents an opportunity to discuss the intersection of poet and poetry.
Ask students to consider how much or how little Larkin’s life matters in their assessment
of his work. Does the knowledge of opinions he apparently held alter their perception of
the poems? Is Larkin’s private life—which he seems to have successfully kept out of his
published work—irrelevant? How important are the poet’s intentions to an analysis of the
poetry? What do we wish to know of the poet’s biography before we can properly
understand and appreciate his work?
Notes on Approaching Particular Works
“Talking in Bed”
Form: Twelve-line poem, in four stanzas of three lines each.
Background/Approaches: “Talking in Bed” offers a startling glimpse of intimacy, a
frank, unadorned view of sex and relationships. While some of Larkin’s best-known
(later) poetry celebrates the sexual revolution through the beginning of sexual intercourse
(as in “Annus Mirabilis”), here we see the implications of sharing a bed, the (immediate)
aftermath of sex.
You may want to begin discussing the poem by first asking students to think through
what they expect of poems about love and sex. What expectations might they form from
the poem’s title? Are these expectations subverted by the poem that follows? What is the
vision of human connection, of the bond between lovers, offered by “Talking in Bed”?
Think too about the significance of a poem whose subject is the difficulty of speaking, of
finding “words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and not unkind.” Does the poem
manage to find these words? Does this seem appropriate criteria to apply to poems about
love generally? What might such words be? And why might they be so difficult to find?

Connections: It may be interesting to read “Talking in Bed” in conjunction with Larkin’s
“Annus Mirabilis.” Though “Annus Mirabilis” is a later poem, “Talking in Bed” seems to
depict the consequences of the year of wonders that inaugurated sexual intercourse.
“Annus Mirabilis”
Form: Twenty-line poem, in four stanzas of five lines each. Each stanza is rhymed
abbab.
Background/Approaches: The poem’s title is a Latin phrase meaning “wonderful year”
or “year of miracles.” For Larkin, as he declares at the very start of his poem, 1963, or the
year “sexual intercourse began,” is just such a wondrous year. You might want to begin
at the beginning, asking students to consider the tone of the poem and the sincerity of the
speaker. What do we make of a poem written in 1967 proclaiming that “life was never
better than / In nineteen sixty-three”? How does the assertion that this was “just too late”
for the speaker illuminate such a proclamation? And what can we make of a term
traditionally used to refer to holy miracles serving as a title for a poem about sexual
discovery?
Connections: The Oxford English Dictionary notes John Dryden’s poem “Annus
Mirabilis” (1667) as the first known recorded use of the phrase; Dryden’s poem
commemorates the year 1666, a year that is perhaps most notable for the Great Plague of
London, as well as the Great Fire. Dryden’s poem suggests that God’s wisdom and
munificence have spared London from greater disaster (anticipated in a year ending with
“666,” or the “Number of the Beast”), and that this constitutes a miracle. Dryden’s poem
might serve as an interesting counterpoint to Larkin’s, particularly if we take into account
Larkin’s comment, included in one of the letters he wrote as a student at Oxford, that he
loathed Dryden.
Because Larkin dates the beginning of sexual intercourse to “between the end of the
Chatterley ban / And the Beatles' first LP,” you might consider asking students to read
excerpts from D.H. Lawrence’s novel (Chapter 3 of the novel is included in “Contexts:
Power, Politics, and the Book”), as well as to listen to songs from that Beatles’ first
album, Please Please Me.
The sexual revolution, or the “beginning of intercourse,” also figures prominently in
Larkin’s “High Windows,” which alludes to the “paradise” represented by the realization
that “he’s fucking here and she’s / Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm.”
"This Be the Verse"
Form: Twelve-line poem, in three stanzas of four lines each, rhymed abab.
Background/Approaches: "This Be the Verse" first appeared in the August 1971 issue
of the New Humanist and was then included in Larkin's last published volume of poetry,

High Windows (1974). It is, perhaps, Larkin's best-known poem; it is quite possibly his
most quotable.
You might want to begin by asking students to consider the poem's title. "This Be the
Verse" appears to be evoking Biblical truths; some have suggested that it is reminiscent
of God's promise to visit "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children" in Exodus. What
is to be made of this mixture of the sacred and the profane? What does the combination
of title and subject suggest about the poet’s view of religion? Of the family unit? Of the
respect to be accorded to the father and the Father?
Indeed, you may wish to focus the discussion on the family and the society for which the
family arguably serves as the most basic unit. Consider the poem’s vision of social
intercourse, of the relations between men, of inheritance and history. The vision is
particularly jarring when regarded in light of the suggestion that no responsibility is
borne and, thus, no resolution—save the refusal to reproduce, to continue the family
line—is possible. You mum and dad may not mean to fuck you up, but they do so surely
and without fail, a vicious cycle that ensures that your own children will suffer the same
fate, perhaps a worse one. Do not, then, under any circumstances, have kids, Larkin
advises. But what is to be made of this “solution”? Is the advice offered sincerely? In
jest? Is it so simple to dismiss the poem as a joke, or does it somehow defy such easy
categorization?
It may be helpful here to take the time of the poem’s publication into account. Written
sometime in 1971, “This Be the Verse” appears to be acknowledging and coming to
terms with the effects of the countercultural movements of the Sixties, to be suggesting
that the generational gap, between those now coming of age and those who matured at an
earlier time, is not easily overcome. Precisely where Larkin falls in with the generations
is not clear: on the one hand, the poem seems to announce its allegiance and indebtedness
to the Free Speech Movement, to side with the young in its use of the word “fuck” in its
very first line; on the other hand, the poem makes use of traditional form and meter.
Perhaps, then, “This Be the Verse” is a child of sorts—note the sing-song, nursery rhyme
scheme of the poem—bred by tradition and liberation, and “fucked up” by both in turn.
Connections: Among Larkin’s own work, several of the poems included in the same
collection as “This Be the Verse”—1974’s High Windows—might be of interest in
studying the poem. The collection’s title poem also makes use of profanity, in part to
stress the division between the generations; arguably, “Annus Mirabilis,” though less
shocking in its language, makes a similar case. You may also want to look at “Vers de
Sociéte,” which presents a bleak vision of social life, a vision possibly informed by the
kind of family history depicted in “This Be the Verse.”
You might also want to direct students’ attention to Robert Louis Stevenson’s
“Requiem,” which likely supplied Larkin’s title: “This be the verse you grave for me /
Here he lies where he longed to be.” The allusion to Stevenson is particularly interesting,
for in “Requiem,” the speaker finds happiness and peace in death seen as homecoming.

“Aubade”
Form: Fifty-line poem, in five stanzas of ten lines each. Each stanza is rhymed
ababccdeed.
Background/Approaches: “Aubade” was published in the Times Literary Supplement
on December 23, 1977. Though Larkin would go on to write and publish several more
poems, “Aubade” is arguably his last important poem.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines “aubade” as “a song or instrumental
composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak,” or “a poem or song of or
about lovers separating at dawn.” Traditional aubades often take the form of a dramatic
dialogue between lovers, with one announcing the coming of dawn, which heralds
parting, and the other refusing to take heed. Ask students to consider how Auden's
aubade functions within this tradition; who is the “lover” addressed by the poem's
speaker? Many critics have pronounced the “lover” to be life itself, seeing the poem as
fundamentally about death. How satisfying is this explanation? What might it suggest
about the tone of the poem? Its mood?
Another possibility may be suggested by the fact that “Aubade” was written toward the
end of Larkin’s career. Ask students to think about the ways in which the poem seems to
be offering a summation, a culmination of the themes that have concerned the poet, that
reoccur throughout his body of work. In what sense can “Aubade” be said to represent a
leave-taking of sorts, a goodbye the poet offers to the poetry?
In a similar vein, how does “Aubade” invoke, reiterate, and expand on the themes
common to Larkin’s work? How does it represent his concern with the everyday, with
ordinary life? How is that life understood now that it is ending? How is “Aubade” more
“poetic” than Larkin’s earlier poems?
Connections: John Donne found the aubade particularly well-suited to metaphysical
rumination and his “The Sun Rising” is a good example of the form.
Questions for Discussion
1. Discuss Larkin in relation to modernism. Is his avowal of an anti-modernist stance
evident in the poetry?
2. How does Larkin reconcile form and subject? That is, what can be made of his
frank discussions and occasionally obscene language in connection to his use of
traditional poetic form and meter?
3. How does Larkin’s use of rhyme contribute to the effect of his poetry? How does
rhyme contribute, for example, to the impact of “This Be the Verse”?

4. Discuss Larkin’s use of language. Does he use “the language of ordinary people …
the accepted sense of words and … the accepted grammatical constructions”? How
does Larkin’s attempt to use such language impact the poetry?
5. What is Larkin’s vision of the family? Of society? Of history?
6. In a review of Larkin’s Collected Poems, Derek Walcott says that Larkin “invented
a muse: her name was Mediocrity.” Other critics, too, have seen him as the poet of
the everyday. How apt is the description of Larkin as the diurnal poet, one
chronicling the average life? And what, ultimately, is Larkin’s sense of existence?
7. How does the controversy following the publication of Larkin’s correspondence
affect your perception of the poetry?
Critical Viewpoints /Reception History
In January 2008, the Times of London named Philip Larkin the greatest postwar British
writer. Conceding that “he was, it is now generally agreed, not a very nice man” and that
his Collected Poems is a rather slender tome, the Times writer, Erica Wagner, pronounced
Larkin “the quiet modern genius of English letters.”
As the Times article suggests, Larkin was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a prolific
poet; he published five relatively short volumes of poetry, with long intervals between
each. Of those, he considered only the last three—The Less Deceived (1955), The
Whitsun Weddings (1964), and High Windows (1974)—mature, significant work. [Larkin
also authored two novels—Jill and A Girl in Winter, as well as a number of essays and
reviews.] Nonetheless, he is widely considered an important voice, a major English poet,
perhaps, as the British critic Clive James would have it, “the greatest poet of his time.”
He was also a man who, as revealed by the publication of his correspondences, was prone
to racism, misogyny, and an interest in sadomasochistic pornography.
Still, at the time of his death, Larkin was certainly the best-known and most admired poet
of his generation, as is readily evident from the obituaries marking his death at the age of
63. A year earlier, in 1984, Larkin had declined the poet laureate post offered to him; he
had promised to do as much when, once asked what he thought about the prospect, he
claimed, “I dream about that sometimes—and wake up screaming. With any luck they'll
pass me over.” That he was not passed over is a testament to Larkin’s poetic powers; that
he passed on the offer is a testament to his own reclusive tendencies, his preference for
solitude and privacy, and, perhaps most significantly, to his own poetic inclinations.
Reviewing Larkin’s Collected Poems (1989) in The New York Review of Books, Derek
Walcott writes, “The average face, the average voice, the average life—that is, the life
most of us lead, apart from film stars and dictators—had never been defined so precisely
in English poetry until Philip Larkin. He invented a muse: her name was Mediocrity. She
was the muse of the diurnal, of habit, of repetition. She lived in life itself, not as a figure
beyond it, a phantom of yearning, but as the plain, transparent companion of a confirmed

enedict.” In another review of the collection, J.D. McClatchy suggests that Larkin
“refused both the glamorous technical innovations and myth-mongering of Modernism as
well as the will to transcendence that empowered many of his peers. He preferred to
write, in clipped, lucid stanzas, about the failures and remorse of age, about stunted lives
and spoiled desires…. But from such refusals he fashioned a rich body of work likely to
stand as the most enduring of mid-century British poetry.” It is precisely this lucidity that
many reviewers recognized as the key to Larkin’s greatness even before his death; in a
1984 review of Larkin’s miscellany, Anatole Broyard wrote, “It would be difficult to
imagine a more unpretentious poet than Philip Larkin. In fact, his poems almost seem to
consist of what is left after all pretentiousness is edited away. He restores the English
language to a dictionary freshness, until it crackles like new money.”
Such freshness seems to have been the result of Larkin’s unequivocal anti-modernist
stance, Simon Petch posits in The Art of Philip Larkin (1981). That stance would have
much to do with Larkin’s critical reception and its fluctuating fortunes. Following his
inclusion in Poets of the 1950s, edited by D.J. Enright, Larkin came to be seen as
representative of a particular moment (the 1950s) in a particular tradition (English
poetry); “it is in the poetry of Philip Larkin that the spirit of the 1950s finds its most
complete expression in English poetry,” A.R. Jones wrote in “The Poetry of Philip
Larkin: A Note on Transatlantic Culture” (Western Humanities Review, 1962). Other
critics would echo the assessment, locating in Larkin’s poetry “the inherent tragedy of the
human condition” as it comes to a head in “the mid-twentieth century” (Lolette Kuby, An
Uncommon Poet for the Common Man [The Hague: Mouton, 1974]). Others stressed his
English “gentility” (A. Alvarez, The New Poetry [Penguin, 1962]). Such appraisals could
be a double-edged sword, particularly as critics increasingly came to view Larkin as
being in direct opposition to what was seen as adventurous developments in American
poetry in the 1960s. By the time Larkin’s last volume of poetry, 1974’s High Windows,
was published, many critics decreed it a falling-off from his previous work, though the
collection included poems that would come to be some of Larkin’s best-known and mostloved
work, including “This Be the Verse” and “Annus Mirabilis.” On the other hand, the
publication of Larkin’s criticism, reviews, and essays as Required Writing: Miscellaneous
Pieces 1955-1982 (1983) seemed to restore critical accolades, bringing in fresh praise
and a renewed appreciation, not only for the prose pieces but for the poetry as well.
In the meantime, Larkin himself stayed out of the fray. He continued his work as a
university librarian, rarely granting interviews or doing any sort of publicity. (In a rare
interview with the Paris Review, Larkin remarked of those poets who explain their work,
“It’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.”)
Though Larkin’s reputation seemed secured at the time of his death, the 1992 publication
of his letters (which he had apparently wished destroyed upon his death) as well as a
biography by Andrew Motion (Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life, 1993) raised new questions
about the poet’s views. Larkin’s correspondence revealed troubling tendencies toward
racism and sexism, an apparent obsession with pornography, and a turn to right-wing
politics (particularly disturbing in conjunction with the revelation that Larkin’s father had
been an admirer of Hitler). But ultimately, as Clive James has noted, Larkin managed to

keep his darker impulses out of his poetry. That poetry ultimately stands alone: proud,
beautiful, significant, lasting.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Yevgeniya Traps of Queens
College, The City University of New York, for the preparation of the draft material.