Almost a decade ago Kingsley Amis pooh-poohed the idea of anyone
wanting to read a philosophical poem; others with similarly jaunty
malice scorned apoca-??yptic verse or continentalism or indeed any
sort of emotional thunder. Thomas and Sitwell, for instance, were
Out. Thus the Movement: a group of academic-administrative poets,
products of the English Welfare State, anti-romantic, wryly
wistful, empirical to a fault. Their master was and is Philip
Larkin. His third collection, almost a blueprint, thematically and
qualitatively, of his last (The Less Deceived), has a title-poem as
splendid as "Church Going", has "An Arundel Tom" and "Ambulances"
the equals of, respectively, "At Grass" and "Next, Please"; etc.
etc. The only difference now is an occasional Audenesque banter,
ambivalently used. A supple middle-range avoiding both the
over-charged and over-mild, a queerly personal impersonal voice,
cool candid lines so cleverly controlled- these make up the Larkin
signature. And he can, like no one else, distill a strange
??laintive music on the slightest theme in the slightest way: "Home
is so sad. It stays as it was left/Shaped to the comfort of the
last to go/As if to win them back..." Larkin is the sophisticated
provincial, the "singer" of an unfevered life, the poet presenting
past loves, aging, even death quite as reasonably and rigorously
"distant" as his observations on the domestic scene, the "kiddies
clobber," the holiday, record favorites and reading habits. If
Kipling was the chronicler of Imperialism, Larkin is that of Little
England. In his country's unroaring poetic kennel, he is definitely
top dog. (Kirkus Reviews)
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) remains England's best-loved poet - a
writer matchlessly capable of evoking his native land and of
touching all readers from the most sophisticated intellectual to
the proverbial common reader. The late John Betjeman observed that
'this tenderly observant poet writes clearly, rhythmically, and
thoughtfully about what all of us can understand'. Behind this
modest description lies a poet who made greatness look, in Milton's
prescription, 'simple, sensuous and passionate'. This collection,
first published in 1967, contains many of his best-loved poems,
including The Whitsun Weddings, An Arundel Tomb, Days, Mr Bleaney
and MCMXIV.
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