High Windows
When I see a couple of kidsAnd guess he's fucking her and she'sTaking pills or wearing a diaphragm,I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--Bonds and gestures pushed to one sideLike an outdated combine harvester,And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly. I wonder ifAnyone looked back at me, forty years back,And thought, Thatlls be the life;No God any more, or sweating in the dark
About hell and that, or having to hideWhat you think of the priest. HeAnd his lot will all go down the long slideLike free bloody birds. And immediately
Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
― poortheatre (poortheatre), Monday, 12 December 2005 07:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― moley, Monday, 12 December 2005 07:51 (eighteen years ago) link
The idea that "perfection" is a quality one would want in poetry seems... problematic.
Why is he so unspecific? He isn't talking about actual leaves unfolding, or an actual couple who could be fucking. It's based more on definitions, perhaps received definitions: Leaves are, at some point, buds, and then they open up and become leaves. Kids today, they fuck each other, and the girls take pills or wear diaphragms. It's as if he's never actually seen a leaf or a young couple, or perhaps he's seen so many that they have all blurred together, and he can't remember any specific one. Or he's actively avoiding that kind of specificity. Almost every idea quoted here has that quality: "They fuck you up, your mum and dad" is perhaps an "edgier" idea (or was at the time, perhaps -- it seems bone obvious now) but still seems like a received idea (and I think what makes that line so memorable is the singsong rhythm and monosyllabic words, not the insight).
And in many ways I find the emotional heft (and even the thought process, the structure of the ideas) to be a sort of received idea. "Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless": you drop an idea like this at a party, and people go "heaaaaavy" and accuse you either of philosophy or poetry. And there is an idea that "earning" that kind of statement is what makes good poetry; poetry is the vehicle which takes you to that kind of "poetic" emotional rush; that is perhaps what the "perfect" poem does. Well, I guess; if a poem is going to be emotionally transportive, I'd rather it took me someplace a little more unexpected, someplace I couldn't put my finger on quite so easily.
But that's my taste. I'm actually more curious about what the Larkin fans think of his use of generalized ideas.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 12 December 2005 08:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― Falling down the stairs again (noodle vague), Monday, 12 December 2005 09:30 (eighteen years ago) link
Now, OK. There are some potentially interesting implications that can be teased out of this conceit. Leaves are individual, but seem interchangeable; perhaps people are like that as well. The cycle of leaves seems eternal, but of course trees eventually die. You could go further with this, following the metaphor's reasoning like some pre-scientific thinking trying to use the barest amount of observation coupled with a lot of "reasoning" to arrive at how the universe must be. It's an odd form of argument that poetry is very good at and which appeals at a certain gut level but which doesn't actually... work. Because people aren't leaves, after all, and just because two things are similar in one way doesn't mean they will be similar in all ways.
Anyway, he doesn't go any further with this metaphor, but drops it. I'm not entirely sure what the "castles" mean in the third stanza -- in context it seems like it should be a type of bird, or something -- but the gist of it seems to be that, despite the fact that these aren't actually reborn leaves, but are new leaves, they still inspire us to want to be reborn ourselves. And there is some despair there, I guess, since the leaves aren't actually reborn, and thus our chances of being reborn are slim.
But then again this ignores that nevertheless there are new leaves, and even though it's not literally the same leaves reborn, a new generation of leaves, much like a new generation of people, and that doesn't seem so bad. Oh, and leaves don't seem to be a good metaphor for people, since people aren't a part of something; leaves are like hair, which grows on the person [tree] and eventually falls off. But the tree manages to renew itself through its new coat of leaves, making the very renewal that the poem despairs of seem eminently possible.
But the "seem" in the next-to-last line and the repetition of "afresh" in the final line and other parts of the text (does it really end with a comma?!) make the gloomy interpretation seem to be the one he was going for. "Their greenness is a kind of grief" -- I'd put my money on the sense of the poem being that leaves inspire one towards a renewal that one cannot achieve, that the leaves are not actually achieving.
But if so, I think it stems from a poor engagement with its central metaphor.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 12 December 2005 10:50 (eighteen years ago) link
― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 12 December 2005 11:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― moley, Monday, 12 December 2005 11:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 12 December 2005 11:48 (eighteen years ago) link
― Falling down the stairs again (noodle vague), Monday, 12 December 2005 12:03 (eighteen years ago) link
If I could answer this sort of question, I'd be a professor rather than a librarian. And in any case, I shouldn't want to. It's a thing you don't want to think about. It happens, or it happened, and if it's something to be grateful for, you're grateful. I remember saying once, I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: it's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife. Whoever I was talking to said, They'd do that, too, if their agents could fix it.
― m coleman (lovebug starski), Monday, 12 December 2005 12:08 (eighteen years ago) link
i also don't think i really understand chris's objection to "the trees"; surely you could also object that shelley doesn't really give a full and accurate description of the nature of the west wind?
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 12 December 2005 12:23 (eighteen years ago) link
Sandy said she had gone to a gynecologist on the Upper East Side whom a friend had recommended. She told the doctor she wasn't married, but she wanted to be able to make love with her boyfriend, and she didn't want to get pregnant. The doctor, a distinguished-looking man in his mid-forties, didn't say anything, but he fitted her for a diaphragm, told her how to use it, and she thanked him and got up to leave. He walked her to the door of his office and uttered a line she would always remember. "Well," he said, "you're off to the races."
Sandy laughed when she told me the story, amused rather than angered by the doctor's presumption of her promiscuity. She and I both took it as an indication of the jealousy of an older man for a beautiful, intelligent, "nice" young woman who could have sex with whom she chose, with a freedom that was not available in his own generation.
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 12 December 2005 17:27 (eighteen years ago) link
― the pinefox, Monday, 12 December 2005 17:29 (eighteen years ago) link
― o. nate (onate), Monday, 12 December 2005 17:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, 12 December 2005 20:45 (eighteen years ago) link
And this isn't a student-y kind of Deep Thought?
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 12 December 2005 22:10 (eighteen years ago) link
This, though, was another example I was thinking of using. They are nobles shown in their "proper habits" and demonstrate the "plainness of the pre-Baroque". He really doesn't want the couple to be all that specifically historically placed. He isn't interested in saying anything about the couple, historically (he doesn't name them, certainly, or try to imagine any concrete details about their life) and their plainness adds to the effect. There is, really, nothing to focus on except the pure content of the sculpture: They are holding hands. And, cast in stone, it becomes an idea of a love made permanent and eternal, which is contrasted with what human love actually is (to Larkin), which is no such thing.
So for me, the tomb still doesn't feel specific; it feels like he thought: People say love is eternal, but it isn't, and people say our love will outlast our death, but it doesn't, and is there an example of a love that does outlast death and is eternal, such as an expression of love cast in stone in a tomb? And every detail in the poem points to this idea, and every detail that might make the idea a little less axiomatic is cast away.
I don't think that either this poem or the trees poem is especially "inward looking" or "outward looking". I think they consist of playing with these axiomatic relationships between broad concepts, illustrated with a single conceit (does Larkin ever use more than one conceit per poem?) and wrapping the whole thing up in what might be called "charming gravitas" to obscure how tenuous his connections are, and how limited his thinking is.
He might be especially good at the "charming gravitas", though, and that might be what people like in him. It's a very common "voice" in poetry of all stripes, and I generally can't stand it. But it's so common that either most people like it or they don't realize that poetry doesn't have to have that voice. But, again, that's my taste.
The line Trayce quoted about "the music in the piano stool" seems far more specific (although maybe for Larkin it was a given that homes contained piano stools with music in them?) and meaningful.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 12 December 2005 22:44 (eighteen years ago) link
But again, you seem to be taking Larkin to task for not being a kind of poet that he isn't. It's personal taste, like you said, but I think his poems are inward-looking in that they're almost all expressions of his own personality, not arid statements of ideas. He affected that "charming gravitas" in his life as well as his work, and to the extent that he did it's his voice.
(Music in the piano stool is cute: it would be very common in pre-war Middle Class homes.)
― Falling down the stairs again (noodle vague), Monday, 12 December 2005 23:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― Falling down the stairs again (noodle vague), Monday, 12 December 2005 23:24 (eighteen years ago) link
The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.
An act of fidelity that wasn't meant proving how our sense that our love will outlast us as almost true: It is hard for me to read this as "a hope or belief that the good we do outlasts us, rather than the evil." The good that outlasts us isn't the good that we do, it is the good that our friends impose upon us when they tell the story of our lives, a good we "hardly meant", illustrated by placing us in a position that we "would not think to lie [in] so long"; the faithfulness that outlasts us is something done in effigy.
And yes, you could identify the specific tomb, or let's say you could, but it's not the specificness of the tomb or the people in it that he's interested in, he's interested in how the definitions of this detail contrast with definitions of love's eternity. I'm not actually suggested he thought of the conceit and then hunted down a tomb to match it, but he might as well have.
That affected voice is always acknowledging that it is affected.
Do any examples come to mind?
But again, you seem to be taking Larkin to task for not being a kind of poet that he isn't.
Well, sure. I might also accuse you of liking Larkin for being the kind of poet that he is. ;-)
― Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 13 December 2005 00:01 (eighteen years ago) link
But I know very little, and I don't have the words to say things correctly. So sorry, but I like him. That's about all.
― Ally C (Ally C), Tuesday, 13 December 2005 00:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― moley, Tuesday, 13 December 2005 10:25 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1135797904106880.xml&coll=7
I Remember, I Remember"
Coming up England by a different line For once, early in the cold new year, We stopped, and, watching men with number plates Sprint down the platform to familiar gates, 'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. 'I was born here.'
I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign That this was still the town that had been 'mine' So long, but found I wasn't even clear Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates Were standing, had we annually departed
For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went: Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots. 'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?' No, only where my childhood was unspent, I wanted to retort, just were I started:
By now I've got the whole place clearly charted. Our garden, first: where I did not invent Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits, And wasn't spoken to by an old hat. And here we have that splendid family
I never ran to when I got depressed, The boys all biceps and the girls all chest, Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be 'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that, The bracken where I never trembling sat,
Determined to go through with it; where she Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'. And, in those offices, my doggerel Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,
Who didn't call and tell my father There Before us, had we the gift to see ahead -- 'You look as if you wished the place in Hell,' My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well, I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.
'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'
― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Tuesday, 3 January 2006 13:36 (eighteen years ago) link
what i love most about his work is when he begins a poem focused on the dirt and muck and messiness of human existence (which he always manages to convey so concisely: a single "crap" in larkin has the weight of a zillion "fucks" in any half-assed beat writer), then slowly pulls back to focus on an image of mysterious transcendence. this happens most movingly, for me, at the end of "aubade," when the POV abruptly shifts out of the narrator's feverish 4 a.m. thoughts to the cool pre-dawn air outside and "postmen like doctors going from house to house." without in any way diminishing the horror of being suddenly aware of your mortality, larkin suggests that - well, you know, that isn't ALL there is.
:-) i was hoping there'd be a j.d. post on this thread!
― it was jody that killed the beast (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 3 January 2006 13:55 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/25/complete-poems-philip-larkin-review
John Banville review of the Complete Poems.
Odd use of the word 'purblind' as a verb, which makes me unsure how to say it.
This bit sounds a bit annoying:
the citation Burnett offers from a fellow critic who, warning against a too literal linking of the poet's life and the poet's poems, "correctly insists that 'An April Sunday Brings the Snow' does not specify the sex of the 'you' addressed, the relationship of the speaker to that person, or indeed details of skin colour and ethnicity".
That sort of modern pedantry of the absent or insane 'set of all sets' inclusiveness, which seems to characterise the vast industry of modern academia when it errs. (Can't be accused of laziness or complacency like much older English criticism, but there's almost a lack of energy gone into thinking about what might and might not be useful.)
But yeah, I'll definitely be spending some time looking at this, even if I don't buy it just yet.
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 25 January 2012 12:52 (twelve years ago) link
paul muldoon reviews larkin's 'collected' stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/books/review/philip-larkins-complete-poems.html?pagewanted=all
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 14 May 2012 05:59 (eleven years ago) link
i don't think that larkin intends "nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless" to be a student-y kind of Deep Thought: it's a description of a universe without god or heaven. every generation grows up less and less in thrall to the church and conventional morality; the final result, as larkin sees it, is nihilism.And this isn't a student-y kind of Deep Thought?― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, December 12, 2005 10:10 PM (6 years ago)
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, December 12, 2005 10:10 PM (6 years ago)
six years later, i still find this to be one of the most irritating exchanges i've ever had on ilx.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 14 May 2012 06:04 (eleven years ago) link
i went to my copy of collected poems (not the new one) on the shelf to look up "mr bleaney", and i guess my ex-girlfriend bought me this book, which i'd forgotten, but which i was reminded of when i opened it up and a dead pressed flower immediately slipped right past "that music in the piano stool. that vase." and fell to the floor; SOME HEAVY SHIT HAPPENING OVER HERE
― good men like my father, or president truman (difficult listening hour), Monday, 14 May 2012 06:39 (eleven years ago) link
the music, i mean. not that music.
― good men like my father, or president truman (difficult listening hour), Monday, 14 May 2012 06:40 (eleven years ago) link
like fully half of larkin's last lines make me wince. compliment.
― good men like my father, or president truman (difficult listening hour), Monday, 14 May 2012 06:48 (eleven years ago) link
funny what you find in books. i was lying on my couch earlier and i picked up a copy of mary gaitskill's 'bad behavior,' which i bought used a few nights ago. i held it over my head and opened it up and a very small piece of cardboard the previous owner'd been using as a bookmark fell out and struck my face like an inch away from my eye, with the pointy edge. i was this close to having the lamest 'and that's how i lost my eye' story ever.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, 14 May 2012 06:50 (eleven years ago) link
i bought a copy of the love of the last tycoon that turned out to have a photograph in it of a guy in a college sweatshirt on a boat with his arm around an intensely smiling blonde and it was lol because it might as well have been fitzgerald.
― good men like my father, or president truman (difficult listening hour), Monday, 14 May 2012 06:55 (eleven years ago) link
what will survive of us is books
― good men like my father, or president truman (difficult listening hour), Monday, 14 May 2012 06:57 (eleven years ago) link
Suspended lion faceSpilling at the centreOf an unfurnished skyHow still you stand,And how unaidedSingle stalkless flowerYou pour unrecompensed.
The eye sees youSimplified by distanceInto an origin,Your petalled head of flamesContinuously exploding.Heat is the echo of yourGold.
Coined there amongLonely horizontalsYou exist openly.Our needs hourlyClimb and return like angels.Unclosing like a hand,You give for ever.
Managed to get a pristine copy of Selected Poems for a few quid, keep returning to this one.
― xelab, Saturday, 7 June 2014 00:36 (nine years ago) link
i'm with nv:
aubade
the cul de sac of cul de sacs
― For bodies we are ready to build pyramids (whatever), Saturday, 7 June 2014 00:48 (nine years ago) link
this is the hull i will die in
― mark s, Wednesday, 19 June 2019 11:29 (four years ago) link
my life v much mirrors Phil's except without the talent
― Oy McVey (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 19 June 2019 11:45 (four years ago) link
I am sure you have a finer appreciation of jazz :)
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 19 June 2019 11:47 (four years ago) link
:D well it doesn't stop at 1940
― Oy McVey (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 19 June 2019 11:54 (four years ago) link
It began in 1963.
― TS The Students vs. The Regents (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 19 June 2019 11:56 (four years ago) link
PL's grasp of early jazz is good not bad
(also he's right abt coltrane lol)
― mark s, Wednesday, 19 June 2019 11:57 (four years ago) link
Like almost any good critic he's way better on what he likes than what he doesn't. And his Bechet poem is good.
― Oy McVey (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 19 June 2019 12:06 (four years ago) link
What will survive of us is Love Supreme
― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, 19 June 2019 12:12 (four years ago) link
As I recall of All What Jazz (it's a long time since I read it) he's only really interested in the stuff he loved when he was young, and nothing else. Even when he's given some crate-digging reissue stuff from that era to review his attitude is basically "It can't be any good, otherwise I would've know about it at the time".
― fetter, Wednesday, 19 June 2019 12:35 (four years ago) link
"Well, / We shall find out."
― Eyeball Kicks, Wednesday, 19 June 2019 12:37 (four years ago) link
― Fizzles, Wednesday, 19 June 2019 20:54 (four years ago) link
Palmer, Richard. “ALL WHAT JAZZ: LARKIN'S MOST EXPENSIVE MISTAKE.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), vol. 9, no. 2, 2003
Interesting analysis on Larkin and the whole All What Jazz furore that I haven't really seen circulated - obviously Palmer being an acquaintance and the fact he was publishing a book on Larkin's Jazz reviews should be accounted for - but there are some good points made suggesting Larkin had more respect for post-1940 jazz then he gets credit for and the introduction might have been somewhat tongue in cheek.
― knowing for certain the first touch of the light will finish you (fionnland), Wednesday, 14 April 2021 12:58 (three years ago) link
Anyway I'm waiting for a copy of AWJ to arrive and looking forward to re-evaluating his reviews in light of the above.
― knowing for certain the first touch of the light will finish you (fionnland), Wednesday, 14 April 2021 13:00 (three years ago) link