Construct your own Larkin poem to the same metre and rhyme scheme:
Choose one of the following themes:
Choose some of the associated vocabulary:
Stick to one of the metres analysed:
Build it up!
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Wild Oats
'Why don't you do something about it then?!' - Larkin's tone of resignation and reader response.
Resignation is a quality of tone; if you are resigned to something you just accept that something is going to happen and refuse to try to do anything about it. It's the verbal equivalent of shrugging your shoulders.
We first encounter resignation in Mr Bleaney. There is this terribly bleak portrait of a man and his environment, but to me this feeling is made even more profound by the sense that the narrator is unwilling to do anything to improve his situation.
This invites criticism from cultures like ours which celebrate being proactive: you should always be looking to improve, especially if all this means (in the case of Mr Bleaney) is adding a lampshade and putting up some new and brighter curtains.
Willing suffering, resignation to suffering, or denying yourself a happiness is a curious positioning today, although it might be quite a Christian concept. It is at the heart of these poems.
Second best love - Resignation and priorites in 'Wild Oats'
Love themes from Love Songs in Age:
This poem is more directly about the poet, not obscured or masked. It is the poet in confessional mode, and is revelatory of his personal life, which is mined here for material.
Questions
Resignation is a quality of tone; if you are resigned to something you just accept that something is going to happen and refuse to try to do anything about it. It's the verbal equivalent of shrugging your shoulders.
We first encounter resignation in Mr Bleaney. There is this terribly bleak portrait of a man and his environment, but to me this feeling is made even more profound by the sense that the narrator is unwilling to do anything to improve his situation.
This invites criticism from cultures like ours which celebrate being proactive: you should always be looking to improve, especially if all this means (in the case of Mr Bleaney) is adding a lampshade and putting up some new and brighter curtains.
Willing suffering, resignation to suffering, or denying yourself a happiness is a curious positioning today, although it might be quite a Christian concept. It is at the heart of these poems.
Second best love - Resignation and priorites in 'Wild Oats'
Love themes from Love Songs in Age:
- regrets
reality of human relations (love)
anti-romantic reality
shattering of dreams
This poem is more directly about the poet, not obscured or masked. It is the poet in confessional mode, and is revelatory of his personal life, which is mined here for material.
Questions
- S1 How do the two girls contrast one another? What are the key definitions of the girls? What does this reveal about Larkin's values/priorities? What about Larkin's secret want?
What do we learn about how Larkin picks up women?
How is the line 'But it was the friend i took out' a neat inversion?What do you think sparks 'the whole shooting match off' 'these days'?
- S2 What is the effect of the stanza break?
What details do we learn of the relationship?
- S3 Parting, after about five
Rehearsals, was an agreement
That I was too selfish, withdrawn
And easily bored to love'.
Who says this? How do we know?
Who does he keep pictures of and why? What has been the result of this?
How does the final line finally indict the poet?
What do you think of the way Larkin has run his relationship? Is he just being an idiot, or a realist? What advice would you give him, so he would feel differently next time?
Love Songs in Age
Love Songs in Age
Key terms
A moment recollected in tranquillity
Involuntary Memory
Tradgedy of mature reality
Failure of romantic ideals
Poetry of thought
Poetry of regret
Forward looking/backward looking
A lot of thinking gets done in Larkin’s poems: a lot of his characters are trapped temporarily or caught by a moment ,an imagining or a memory.
QUESTIONS
Key terms
A moment recollected in tranquillity
Involuntary Memory
Tradgedy of mature reality
Failure of romantic ideals
Poetry of thought
Poetry of regret
Forward looking/backward looking
A lot of thinking gets done in Larkin’s poems: a lot of his characters are trapped temporarily or caught by a moment ,an imagining or a memory.
QUESTIONS
- Can you summarise what actually happens in the poem?
What details do we learn of the woman’s life?
At what point does the ‘involuntary memory’ occur?
What prompts this?
What does the detailing on the imagery of the record sleeves tell us about the woman?
What does the detailing on the auditory-imagery of the actual music suggest about the values of the music/youth? What does the music sound like?
What imagery does the poet attach to these sounds?
How is love described? Did it fulfil its potential?
The tragic finale: what does she do with the records? Why?
When did she first play the records?
Details of the memories:
‘The certainty of time laid up in store / as when she played them first’
Tragic lessons learned.
THEMES
There’s a point in your life where your ‘time balance’ tips; there is more behind you than after you
Love and old age are not compatible.
Love is youth.
Love is the solution to our problems.
Love is promised to everybody; it is ours to accept or deny.
Love is an opportunity that, when it arrives, we must take firmly.
Certain objects are associated with love.
You will always remember your first love.
Letter to a lost lover. Write about what provoked the letter and regrets.
Technique cute and brilliant, skilled rhyme.
Regret theme – wild oats
What picture does the poem create of the people here?
There aren't so many people in the poem. Those we do see are referred to in passing: the poem is a sweeping observation, taking in many sights, almost as a bird flies or as a train goes. People appear almost incidentally, as if glimpsed from this train. Notice that the 'workmen at dawn' are shielded (hidden); the 'headscarfed wives' do not show us their faces; the 'cut-price crowd' are just that - a faceless mob.
Larkin also refrains from passing direct comment on these people. All we know of the 'residents of raw estates', for example, is their consumer habits, images which are developed in some detail. Perhaps Larkin is suggesting by placing this emphasis that this is all they infact are, how they choose to be and should be defined.
Nevertheless 'Here' is a picture of the land more than of the people.
Is this a ‘pastoral’ (dealing with an idealised/romanticised rustic or countryside life)?
The poem does deal with country life. It is hard not to read the following without a certain sense of romance being invoked:
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river’s slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud
However it is also a portrait of an unnamed city, and you probably cannot have a 'city pastoral' (perhaps it is a cityscape):'
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water.
This too is a picture, but it is now a picture of human ingenuity, at work within nature. It is peaceful, and significantly, unpeopled. We might conclude that Larkin doesn't like people very much: when they intrude on the picture we get them as consumers, and only really as consumers. It is left up to us to judge whether they pollute the image or not.
After this interruption the poem returns to its rural theme, sweeping from the city and out to, 'isolate villages, where removed lives / lonliness clarifies.' More images gather, almost avoiding people. And the sweep ends only at the sea where we find 'unfenced existence: / Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach'. These last two lines are tricky, but they could be viewed as a release finally, from the pressure of observation and of 'fenced existence'; and of release from obligation into silence and, finally the lonliness the poet seeks.
There aren't so many people in the poem. Those we do see are referred to in passing: the poem is a sweeping observation, taking in many sights, almost as a bird flies or as a train goes. People appear almost incidentally, as if glimpsed from this train. Notice that the 'workmen at dawn' are shielded (hidden); the 'headscarfed wives' do not show us their faces; the 'cut-price crowd' are just that - a faceless mob.
Larkin also refrains from passing direct comment on these people. All we know of the 'residents of raw estates', for example, is their consumer habits, images which are developed in some detail. Perhaps Larkin is suggesting by placing this emphasis that this is all they infact are, how they choose to be and should be defined.
Nevertheless 'Here' is a picture of the land more than of the people.
Is this a ‘pastoral’ (dealing with an idealised/romanticised rustic or countryside life)?
The poem does deal with country life. It is hard not to read the following without a certain sense of romance being invoked:
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river’s slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud
However it is also a portrait of an unnamed city, and you probably cannot have a 'city pastoral' (perhaps it is a cityscape):'
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water.
This too is a picture, but it is now a picture of human ingenuity, at work within nature. It is peaceful, and significantly, unpeopled. We might conclude that Larkin doesn't like people very much: when they intrude on the picture we get them as consumers, and only really as consumers. It is left up to us to judge whether they pollute the image or not.
After this interruption the poem returns to its rural theme, sweeping from the city and out to, 'isolate villages, where removed lives / lonliness clarifies.' More images gather, almost avoiding people. And the sweep ends only at the sea where we find 'unfenced existence: / Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach'. These last two lines are tricky, but they could be viewed as a release finally, from the pressure of observation and of 'fenced existence'; and of release from obligation into silence and, finally the lonliness the poet seeks.
Monday, 9 June 2008
Larkin - Useful Links
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18715
construct a portrait based on poem evidence; then read controversy.
construct a portrait based on poem evidence; then read controversy.
Friday, 6 June 2008
Mr Bleaney - Philip Larkin
- II. ‘How we live measures our own nature’
How does the poem become autobiographical?
- Key terms.
Projection/Identification
Assimilation
Self-fulfilling prophecy
How we are defined
The sadness of objects (as defined by our previous keywords). - Questions you need to be able to answer:
1. Objects/location set the tone: analyse this using the keywords.
2. What, initially is the narrator’s attitude towards the place? What do we know about the place? Is it disparaged? What other sad objects can you think of?
3. Why does he take the room?
4. What else contributes to the feeling of desperation here, apart from the sad objects?
5. Which areas in the poem can you identify as beginning this process of assimilation?
6. Which lines in the third stanza begin the process of projection/identification?
7. How does he know his habits (S4) Can he know this detail?
8. Who is the subject of S6?
9. S7 = self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Definitions you need
Projection - -A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."
-Attributing one's own undesirable traits to other people or agencies."
-The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest.
-People attribute their own undesirable traits onto others. - Identification
-Psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or partially, after the model the other provides.
you identify yourself with (characteristics of) an object. For instance: I identify myself with a characteristic of my father and transform myself to assimilate this characteristic in my personality. I become a little bit like him. This latter has been used by Freud to define the formation of a personality. - Assimilation
-To incorporate and absorb into the mind.
-To make similar; cause to resemble. - Self-fulfilling prophecy
-A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true. - You should be able to answer this question with reference to the above terms:
- How does the poem become autobiographical?
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