RSS SPIRIT

"My words will ruin you."


They recently did a big write up on Philip Larkin in the NY Review of Books (available online.) Perhaps one of the most vicious lyricists who worked in the English language, he put the lie to the notion of poet as melancholic romantic emoting emetically.

But there is something so well wrought in his words, his conjurations so clearly conceived, that he is a poet people keep returning to. Even after they have sworn the Tory Limey beastie off for good.

Anthony Thwaite edited an edition of "Collected Poems" which is all the Larkin anybody will ever need on the shelf. A small black and white picture of a grim faced begoggled bald man stares at you on the cover; one should get a feeling of what one is in for.

Despair, anguish, alienation – all these themes Larkin effortlessly cobbles into something approaching apotheosis of the short lyric form. Who would have thought that poetry would be somehow perfected by such a cold, solitary English bigot? More evidence that artistic achievement has nothing whatsoever to do with progressive morality:

Here is one of his best known poems to cry upon:

This Be The Verse
Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

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