Philip Larkin

English poet and novelist

major poert of the post-World War II period
he attempted to capture ordinary experience in realistic and rational terms
his poetry avoids romanticizing experience and moves away from the
abstract
his poetry follows the cadences of everyday plain speech
it is executed in the poets own voice, which can be humorous, cynical or
thoughtful
to some critics, his poetry seems to grim, bleak, if not black
many of his poems offer intriguing insights to the mind of a complex and
flawed personality
he has been viewed as a gloomy poet, misanthropic and pessimistic about
human endeavors
Larking finds British rivals only in Ted Hughes and Dylan Thomas
his style is accessible, which often uses concrete imagies to move to
symbolic celebration and expression of freedom

Some Poems
The Less Deceived collection of poems
Larkin wished to convey through this title his view that poetry was a
realistic interpretation of life and that his own poetry would represent what
he called his sad-eyed realism
is this volume his poems explore modern attitudes to work, leisure, love
and death and this approach is evident also in his philosophical
preoccupations with questions of belief, knowledge and perception
all these concerns are reinforced by the conditions of post-war England
te poets of the so-called Movement were believed to be empirical in their
approach to life and their representation of it
in the case of Larkin, this empiricism means a desire to see things clearly
and truthfully
the poems in this volume were written in a particular political context and
the ideas expressed in them were part of the general revaluation of beliefs
and values in post-war Britain

The poems Going and Wedding-Wind

these two poems are of the immediate post-war period and express an
uneasy agnosticism
The poem Going is about death, but it also raises existential problems
it offers a negative image of being
Wedding-Wind is an excample of Larkins attitude towards sexual
relationships
 the wedding-night is depicted in the poem as a time of unique happiness,
but the questions of the second stanza imply a certain degree of doubt
about whether such happiness can endure
the happiness of the newly-married woman offers hope, but the poem
ends with a question mark

At Grass
one of the critics has expressed that this poem became one of the most
popular post-war poems because of the retirement of some of the horses
from horse races and their lives of idleness and leisure, symbolized
Britains loss of her past glory
another critic says that the horses in this poem are an emblem of a lost
heroism and a lost social order
it is an essentially English poem
there is an elegant formality in the stanzaic and rhythmic structure of the
poem

Wires
a more or less similar use of an animal fable
it has an allegorical significance
it is about the effective control of cattle
the poems rhyme-scheme sets up a pattern of internal reflection,
reinforcing the concern with containment and enclosure

Myxomatosis
another animal fable
the outbreak of a rabbit disease in certain parts of Britain in 1953
the poem is seeking to establish a parallel between the fate of the
diseased animal and a certain aspect of human life
the words caught, trap, and jaws suggest that the common
experience being described is one of suffering and helplessness

TOO MANY POEMS ITI TRIMIT SI PDF-UL

Ted Hughes
one of the most striking figures among British poets since the World
War II
his major preoccupations are nature and myth
he is obsessed with animals, animal energies and the darks,
mysterious forces that are embodies in natural world
his nature poetry comprises mainly of his poems that explore mans
relation with animal life and landscapes both interacting with the
elements of nature
his nature poetry deals with the problem of modern mans alienation
from nature
it is also an attempt to reunite man with nature
is his view, modern man has discarded his world of feelings,
imagination and pure instincts which is true to nature
Hughes believes that modern mans inner world of pure instincts has
been destroyed bu the abstract dogmas of Christianity
he believes in going back to nature in all its primordial force and
releasing the suppressed instincts
his nature poetry hints at modern mans self-exile from Mother
Nature
animal life, in Hughess poetry, comprehends all non-human life of
flora and fauna
weather and landscape are incidental as setting for his animal life
whose ferocity matches the elements of nature at their irresistible
worst
animal nature is distinct from human civilization of curben
instincts, studious or cultivated responses, rational puniness
animal poems serve as a personal, psychological function so that
through violence, primitive contact with repressed aggression, the
sterile personality created by the society is destroyed and the
instinctual suppressed self cand emerge liberated
Hughess animals are endowed with significant qualities: are non-
rational in power, are single minded in their action, self-centered,
 devoid of fantasy and act instinctually so as to condemn duality in
man
unlike man, they cope with elements to show their unity with nature
Hughes assumes a variety of roles as a fox, a hawk, a jaguar, an
otter, a thrush etc
the voice or tone in almost all his poems is that of an omniscent
narrator and since Hughes is a poet of experience, his poetry is
subjective and supremely and obsessively autobiographical

POEMS
Hawk Roosting
dramatic monologue, told from the point of view of the hawk sitting
on the toop of a tree
he is a monomatiac and a solipsist
he is single minded in his pursuit of his prey
he deals death to his victims and can crush the effortlessly
even in his sleep he contemplates killing
the hawk sees himself as the apotheosis of power and thinks he is
the self-styled ultimate heir of Creation
when he kills he does not think

The Jaguar
a contrast between the animal and the human, between the
enraged freedom of the caged jaguar at the zoo and the fear and
admiration of the onlookers, between the primal energy in the
animal and the baser nature that is latent beneath human rational
control
though a spectator, man is not passive
he admires and shares feelings of the brutes wildness, ferocity and
rage
The Thought-Fox
and evocation of the vital, somewhat terrible spirit of natural life
that summons what is both a fox and a spirit
the fox metaphorically stands for the inspiration, which the poet
hopes to get poetic creation
Hughes establishes a contact between man and nature
the white page is like the snow and with the verb entering the fox
enters in and sets neat prints on the page