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:

• 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  That I was too selfish, withdrawn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?