Book Description

Customer Reviews (29)

A great poet, a great edition.
I have only recently discovered the poetry of Larkin, and his work is insightful, droll, sometimes depressing, but always engaging.He was not afraid of rhyming and using strict meters, and his poems are often beautiful because of, not despite, these elements of traditional poetic craft.A worthy addition to any bookshelf of top-flight poetry.

Astounding
Perhaps Larkin has been somewhat overlooked because he wrote in rhymed verse and the past century has been increasingly focused on free verse.I generally favor free verse, myself, but Larkin's skill at rhyme is such that it is always unobtrusive, never strained or forced, and sometimes.

But, his modernity is indisputable, combining, and perhaps exceeding, the humanity of Auden as well as the perspicacity of Eliot.

His is clearly a concise body of work, but it is large in its range and insight.Larkin's poems often express an thought or feeling that the reader will recognize as a part of his own experience, finally put into words with the utmost clarity.He played his "tennis" with the net, but remained distinctly modern.

This be the verse
There are two different types of Larkin poem. The first type, mostly written before 1955, are influenced by Yeats and Auden and are mediocre. The second, written when he found his voice, are amongst the most wonderful works of English literature ever written.
So what was his voice? Basically that of twentieth century man - atheistic, obsessed with sex, regretting the loss of faith and the old certainties. He takes these subjects and turns them into glorious poems. But here's the really incredible thing: he uses ordinary, uncomplicated language. No tricks, no arcane allusions, just plain English.
It can't be denied that the voice is bleak, and it is too uncompromising for some. However, those who like looking into the heart of darkness will find poems which they will remember for the rest of their lives.

Lame Larkin
I am one of a growing number that find Larkin lame and flaccid. You read, you understand, you move on. There is little to struggle over, nothing one wishes to reread. Simple poems of a lost England.

Horrible
This poetry has no redemption or beauty. It is dry, sarcastic, dismal, and plain out unhealthy to the mind. It's not worth it. Read poetry that moves you to understanding, not this. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wonderful Period Piece
In the middle of World War II, 22-year old Katherine Lind, a refugee from Europe is frozen in time and tragedy. Her past is gone -- family, friends, college life -- and she is living moment by moment, in a humiliating temporary library job, among the unfriendly aliens, somewhere in England.

Six years before it was summer, and the world was at peace. On a lark, she's decided to take up her British pen pal's invitation to a three week stay in the Oxfordshire countryside. Robin Fennel puzzles and fasicinates her. The middle part of the book takes us back six years, to that idyllic time. Katherine and Robin's relationship does not fit into any standard romantic paradigm. It is all too subtle for that, and I'd love to see this exquisitely written novel turned into one of those wonderfully atmospheric films the British excell at.

Once again, it is good to read a World War II story, free of latter day cliches, and the teary-eyed romanticism typical of its own period. This book is rather more rewarding than Larkin's first effort, Jill, in that the lead character -- he does a wonderful job with a woman, by the way -- is more complex, mature and knowing than the hapless John Kemp of Jill.

There is also a hint towards a happy ending, though the ultimate outcome would depend on both characters surviving the war. A beautiful book and a pleasure. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

Larkin on poetry and jazz
Anyone familar with Larkin's poetry will want to read this book of essays on literature and jazz. In it he demonstrates the same humor, common-sense, and intelligence that can be found in his poetry. His strong preference is for poets who are not deliberately obscure or difficult. Indeed, at times Larkin can sound almost anti-intellectual. This is misleading; he is very serious about his art. In this collection, he shows great insight into the works of other 20th Century British poets. His essays on jazz are more melancholy; for Larkin, jazz started going downhill with Bop. Nevertheless, his comments on jazz are insightful.

Larkin's miscellanies
Readers who liked Larkin's poetry will find the same humorous and pessimistic point of view to like in Larkin the book reviewer and jazz critic.

This book gathers together Larkin's miscellanies. It consists oftwo interviews with Larkin, his introductions to his novels and books ofpoetry, talks about poetry, reviews of poetry anthologies, biographies andnovels plus some material about jazz that is also included in his book"All What Jazz." Most of the writing is about literature andmusic with the exception of a review of a book on the language ofchildren.

The poets discussed are almost all British poets of thelate-19th and 20th century such as A.E. Housman, Stevie Smith, WilfredOwen,John Betjeman, Thomas Hardy and W.H. Auden (the last two beingLarkin's favorites). Throughout these writings, Larkin is seen fighting abattle against modernism. For him, the arts in the 20th century went astraywith "(Ezra) Pound, Picasso and (Charlie) Parker." He preferspoems that "use language in the way we all use it" and music thatis "an affair of nice noises rather than nasty ones." This is areasonable asethetic principle but he restates enough times in the book tobecome a little repetitious.

There is still enough good stuff to make thebook worthwhile. There's some funny patches such as Larkin's description ofthe "fleshy, inarticulate" and aging jazz fans "whose firstcoronary is coming like Christmas." As a critic and a writer, Larkinis all for providing pleasure, instead of material for earnest study. Manyreaders will be refreshed by this approach to literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Champagne, Not Sparkling Wine
This magnificent biography reads like a novel. The prose is smooth and clear; this is decidedly not an academic biography. It belongs firmly to the art of literary biography for which the British are renowned. Larkin comes over as a classic eccentric on the order of his friends and contemporaries such as Kingsley Amis. The biography shows again how strong the reaction to social fascism can be; Larkin, like Waugh, Graham Greene and Muggeridge, had a visceral, instinctive mistrust of the Welfare State and its ideology of social "progress." His struggles with women are instructive, but only go to show once again that when asked to choose, some people prefer art to nappies and love. Motion, Martin Amis has pointed out, has a tendency to judge Larkin according to PC standards, thus finding him on the wrong side of history's recent celebration of all things human. Amis, not Motion, makes the case that Larkin should be judged by the standards of this time; if he was a racist, his was an ordinary bigotry, not the over-wrought, systematic racism of the Nazis. No doubt he was impossible to know or be around, but Motion's affectionate, if critical, treatment would be well-advised to consider Amis' warning to keep our faith in the triumph of the individual against the modern mob's claim to all-knowingness.

Philip Larkin
Andrew Motion is a poet and novelist whose earliest poems were lyrical and highly influenced by the work of Philip Larkin. He writes of Larkin in this biography with respect and candor, and not as a hero-worshiper (or disparager). Larkin's life, because of his reclusive nature, was not an open book, and he had a dark side, which contrasts greatly with the kind of lyrical, often witty (though at times bitter) poetry he produced.

Larkin wrote poetry from an early age, though his first desire was to be a novelist. In fact he wrote two novels, neither of which made much of a hit, and he could write no others. He worked every day as a librarian at Brynmor Jones Library in Hull. He loved traditional jazz and wrote frequently about it. He never married, but had two mistresses; one he mistreated badly. He could be funny and also mean-spirited. There were many parts to the man, some at odds with others. Motion does a good job fleshing these sides out and dealing with them without passing judgment. It's a fair and balanced, well-written biography. Recommended.

Humbug
Ignore the previous writer.This is one of the handful of truly fine literary biographies from the last fifty years, maybe more.Unless Larkin himself was fully devoted to falsifying the record, he was every bit the unrelenting prig Motion has made him out to be; and not only does Motion show how Larkin as an artist transcended this, Motion personally knew and liked Larkin.Nowhere does Motion naively simplify the cause and effect between Larkin's childhood and his adult unhappiness --again, the facts are laid out judiciously, and the reader is free to draw conclusions.Finally, the idea that Motion, a Poet laureate, acquaintance of Larkin, and a gifted literary essayist, is somehow lacking in his analysis of the poems is nonsense.Motion takes us through the major work without allowing it to dominate the narrative which is, after all, about Larkin's life.All in all, this is a remarkable piece of literary journalism; absolutely first rank.That anyone interested in Larkin would be scared off by the prior casual dismissal, inattentive as it is, is a travesty.

A disappointing biography
Andrew Motion's biography of Larkin, although well researched, is ultimately disappointing. Motion seems to have little sympathy for Larkin, and one wonders why he undertook this task. He does thoroughly cover the facts of Larkin's life -- his father, who admired Hitler even during the Second World War and his mother who seemed to have evoked only pity from her son. Indeed, according to Motion, Larkin claimed that his parents had such an unhappy marriage that he decided never to marry. It turns out, contrary to what one would believe from the poetry, that Larkin (at least in his later life) was fairly successful with women. However, he was careful not to commit himself too far. Although most people who knew Larkin liked him (such as Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest), this book will not tell you why. A more sympathetic sketch of Larkin can be found in Martin Amis's recent memoir. The book also falls short in its discussion of the poetry. That may be because Larkin's mature style was deceptively simple. While this make the poetry accessible to a wide audience, it robs the biographer of the opportunity to explicate obscure images or references. Anyone interested in Larkin is better off with the Collected Poems, and Required Writing, a book of essays. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
In addition to his acknowledged position as one of Britain's most important poets of the post-World War II era, Philip Larkin was unquestionably one of the last great letter writers. There are over seven hundred letters in this impressive collection, dating from Larkin's late teens until close to his death at the age of sixty-three in 1985. Early letters to school friends, including the writer Kingsley Amis, form a portrait of the young artist, full of jazz, literature, and obscenities. Later correspondents include the novelist Barbara Pym (whose fictional portraits of genteel English country life Larkin so admired), Robert Conquest, Andrew Motion, and Julian Barnes. In his Introduction, Anthony Thwaite writes: "What is remarkable, for all the masks he put on, is how consistently Larkin emerges, whoever he is writing to . . . [The letters] are an informal record of the lonely, gregarious . . . intolerant, compassionate, eloquent, foul-mouthed, harsh and humorous Philip Larkin, who was not only one of the finest poets of our time but also a compulsive and entertaining letter-writer."

16 Pages of Black-and-White Photographs Index

Anthony Thwaite lives in Low Tharston, Norfolk, in the United Kingdom. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (2)

What a Lark(in)!
Larkin, generally acknowledged as Britain's finest post-war poet, along with Betjeman, wrote only two novels, both in his fertile early period. 'Jill' is his first serious attempt at sustained prose writing, and the result is a fine, stimulating book.

'Jill' began life as a cross between a girls' school novel pastiche and mild pornography called 'Trouble at Willow Gables', an origin that manifests itself throughout the finished work, bubbling salaciously beneath the surface of John Kemp's escapist scribblings. John, of course, is a typically Larkin-esque protagonist - socially awkward, an outsider, and, like his creator, constantly struggling with the remains of a stammer. The portrait is, as only Larkin could draw it, at once affectionately tongue-in-cheek and unremittingly brutal (John's intrusion on the tea-party early on is to die for). What may alarm Larkin's readers (having recovered from the shock delivered by the life and letters) is the deep-rooted distrust of the imaginative faculties emerging in 'Jill'.

We watch with horror as John begins to invent a younger sister for himself with a paranoia approaching downright madness. His creation is born from malice and a sense of exclusion, exacerbated by humiliation upon humiliation heaped upon his shoulders and, having its inception in unhealthy emotion, his fantasy sends him spiralling deeper into a delusion culminating in his drunken violation of the girl on to whom he has transferred his invented sibling.

'Jill' is a novel of both tremendous wit and cruelty. The Larkin of the poems is clearly visible here, brooding on deception and deprivation, gently self-deprecating. 'Jill' is an essential read for admirers of Larkin, providing an important insight into his life and thought, as well as a glimpse of an angry, ambitious young man before the weariness set in.

Great War Reading
Phillip Larkin is known as perhaps the greatest British pPoet of the second half of the twentieth century. This book, of a northern, working class boy's first term at Oxford in the grim fall of 1940, offers unparalelled reading pleasure.

Larkin wrote this book in his early twenties, when the war was still very much in progress, and its outcome uncertain. That is only one of the reason I'd recommend it over the many romanticized WW II stories written afterwards, especially in the last decade, when revisionist history takes over, and we sketch characters of the forties as if they had the insights of the nineties.

Here you get the real thing. The war is a presence in the gritty little details of life -- the privations, the routine of putting up the blackout in defense of bombing raids. Towards the end of the book, the hero returns to his northern town to find it devastated.

I found Jill, and Larkin's second and final novel, A Girl in Winter, also set during war-time, bracing, even comforting reading during the first months of the current war. We see that, despite being shadowed by larger events, the inner workings of personality -- love, identity, pride -- carry on, in spite of all.

I wish Larkin had written more novels, or more novelists could write like him. ... Read more

Book Description
Focusing on Philip Larkin's individually published volumes, this book traces clearly the development of his poetic achievement. Arguing engagingly and setting close analysis of individual poems within a theoretical context, Andrew Swarbrick offers a fresh and timely reappraisal of one of this century's major writers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Greatest
Larkin was a great writer and an honest critic, and this is the best-written book of popular music criticism available.
The other reviews posted for this book on Amazon are wrong to imply that Larkin's tastes were timid or stuffy. In fact his heros were Henry Allen, Pee-Wee Russell, Bessie Smith, Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Jabbo Smith, Jack Teagarden and so on. These are among greatest musicians and innovators of jazz.
Yes, Larkin thought Charlie Parker was overrated; he couldn't stand Coltrane; he thought Miles Davis was a bore. But don't be afraid to read why he thought so and you may learn something about your own heros.

Tedium, Thy Name is Larkin
All What Jazz, indeed.While Philip Larkin was a poet of some note, I'm thinking it probably didn't pay real well.So he got a gig, doing a monthly jazz column for the Daily Telegraph.He used this gig to blatherendlessly of the superiority of Dixieland and trad jazz, and the travestyand utter disgrace that is modern jazz, i.e., bebop, hard bop, and horrorabove horrors, the dreaded free jazz.Indeed, the book opens with a quotefrom Miles Davis, trashing Ornette Coleman's music.Nothing like hidingbehind an icon, there, Phil.Miles, who was the Charles Barkley of hisday, would regularly say outrageous things for effect and"press."In print, the words look harsh - the printed page doesnot capture Miles's raspy cackle following his "quote."But theprinted page does capture quite well the clammy, pasty discomfort thatLarkin feels for modern jazz.Yes, pip-pip, give me the old Dixielandbands that I loved as a lad in prep school! OK, fine.A nice remembrancepiece, on occasion, is nice.A barbed attack on an artist or genre canalso be thought-provoking.(I've been known to dabble in such things...) However, Larkin did it EVERY MONTH for 10 years.Talk about a one trickpony, in an era that spawned creative genius and obliterated musicalboundaries, Old Frumpy Phil is pining for the syncopated rhythms of hispast.He would allow for Duke and Basie, but he had little use for Bird orMonk, and if he wasn't outright trashing them, he was smugly doling outleft-handed compliments.But don't get him started on Trane, or, Godforbid, Ornette.Truly the only book that I have read in anger, and out ofmorbid curiosity.Bottom line: it wasn't worth it.Save your money, orbetter yet, go buy a Coltrane disk!

Diary of a sourpuss
When a reviewer calls Coltrane's playing 'possessed continually by an almost Scandinavian unloveliness', and questions Thelonious Monk's sense of rhythm, you start to get a feel for what kind of jazz he'll go for. Andyou'd be right: nothing ever seems to please Larkin quite so much asold-school big band or dixieland, and he's not afraid to say so. Still,he's a good writer and all, so if you're looking for a collection of jazzreviews from the 60s written by a slightly stuffy guy who never really gotover Woody Herman, this is the book for you. ... Read more

Book Description
This book explores Larkin's distinctive place within the poetry of the twentieth century. It includes discussion of Larkin's response to the academic professionalization of poetry fostered by "difficult" Modernism; his diverse poetry of love (in relation to the responses of the poems' addressees); his original development of the genres of reflective elegy and self-elegy; the key metaphor of the domestic interior; history versus historicism; the poetry of place ("here" or Hull); and the profane and sacred (focusing on his animal poems). ... Read more

Product Description
Philip Larkin (1992-1985) is today acclaimed as a British national cultural icon. Historically a "Movementeer," Larkin followed the "pleasure principle" to democratize poetry by forging a distinctive philistine aesthetic, by employing a defiantly demotic diction, and by building his poems around a structure of rational discourse.Philip Larkin : Poetry that Builds Bridges is a well-researched and immensely readable book. It is perhaps the only work available today that offers a comprehensive critical account of the full range of Larkin's poetry. A significant contribution to Larkin studies, this book provides a between-the-lines analysis of almost all the poems embodied in the four major collections of Larkin -- The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows.By exploiting the resources of Larkin's letters, his prose writings and his biography, the author traces, much against the grain of contemporary Larkin criticism, the poet's thematic, attitudinal and technical development from one book of his poetry to the next, and shows the trend of Larkin's evolution.With a holistic approach to the total corpus of Larkin's poetry, the author perspectivises the poet, and argues the Larkin's achievements lie in his success in building bridges between Aestheticism and Philistinism, between Empiricism and Transcendentalism, between Classicism and Romanticism, between Modernism and Postmodernism, between the native British poetic tradition and the Anglo-Franco-American Experimental line, and, above all, between poetry and the reading public.This book also contends the Larkin's vision of life is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but tragic and melioristic. ... Read more

Book Description
The essays in this volume abandon the tired clichés of an older critical consensus and offer a lively, provocative response to such issues as sexual politics, national identity and postcolonialism in the work of Philip Larkin, a writer widely regarded as the best Poet Laureate England never had. ... Read more