Sigggggh, I love Philip Larkin...

we shd start a thread where we interpret poems together, i think it wd be instructive (*sharpens trolling pencil*)

So long as we do it I. A. Richards style

Mark: we did that, about 18 years ago, when poster Cozen was a notable ILB poster. Among other things (?) we had a rewarding long discussion of a particular poem that I liked by Sean O'Brien.

I don't especially see the comparison of Larkin to Stevens, as Larkin's 'ideas' or 'arguments' are usually quite straightforward or at least comprehensible - well, they are often this, though I admit that above I said that sometimes they were not - whereas I don't find those qualities in Stevens. To the point where I am not really sure that Stevens is making a case at all.

I have been reading very early Derek Walcott and he actually reminded me of Stevens, more than anyone.

Stevens can be abstruse but is often straightforward:

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Or:

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

Those may be good poems, but I don't understand what ideas they are advancing - in the particular way that Larkin (for good or ill) does.

I emphasise that I don't think poems 'should' put forward clear ideas; I just observe that Larkin sometimes does.

"We say God and the imagination are one" and "His self and the sun were one/And his poems, although makings of his self,/Were no less makings of the sun" are as straightforward as you can get!

I'll stop b/c we disagree.

take it to the poetry parsing thread!
a thread in which ilx interprets poems, sometimes line by line, and disagrees a lot (probably)

For me, Larkin is particular and personal and local: work is a toad squatting on my life. Parents are shit. Hull is other people. I can't get laid even in a sexy time. He has a grasp of details. He touches universal themes from time to time, but his feet were on the ground.

(I love Larkin BTW)

Stevens is an ontological writer concerned with the universe and with Berkelian perception: masts against a seascape create an order (if a perceiving being contemplates them). A jar shapes a landscape and ultimately a universe (if a perceiving being contemplates it). A frozen dessert, while you contemplate it, is an empire. A stupid bird becomes a whole fucking universe, while you are contemplating it. Any observed detail, to Stevens, can be a springboard into the universal. He touches reality from time to time, but his head was in the clouds.

(I love Stevens BTW)

Can't imagine a world without both

being pretty familiar with what's left of much of the region Larkin writes about i see recognisable details dropped in even when the poem itself is predominantly making the kind of arguments Pinefox describes

otm, Puffin.

I do wonder about Larkin's endings though, and how these lift him free of the accusation of groundedness (I know it's not an accusation really, but I think Larkin has become 'Larkinised' - kind of a subject of his own poem, frozen in time and space like the lovers in An Arundel Tomb - in a way Stevens hasn't and will never be).

I think 'The Whitsun Weddings' is as good an example as any:

We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

It's pointedly ambiguous, certainly, psychedelic even, and perhaps a deliberate attempt at unmooring from a perceived anchoring in the local and the particular. 'High Windows' makes the same move.

Perhaps these are the exception that prove the rule.

Stevens is less of a presence in his poetry; even his grand "we"s are the pronouns of a medium.

I agree, your Lordship. I get the feeling that Wallace Stevens (the person) would have regarded "Wallace Stevens" (the poet) as a character, as a mouthpiece for a particular epistemological viewpoint that was more or less sincerely held by Wallace Stevens (the person).

To Chinasky's point I don't think Phillip Larkin (the person) would have minded being conflated with "Phillip Larkin" (the poet). And I don't think of ~relative~ groundedness as being a bad thing. Being more "down to earth" than an airy spirit like Stevens is not exactly a criticism.

I may have missed something because am not really clear on why this comparison is being made - like, why are we comparing Larkin to Stevens instead of to Dylan Thomas or Sylvia Plath or Randall Jarrell or Audre Lorde or for that matter Adrienne Rich?

Because ILB poster Alfred, Lord S., above, stated that Stevens was like Larkin in writing poems that made statements and arguments.

No other reason.

Chinaski: I don't think Larkin's 'rise to transcendence' moments are the exception at all -- they're a standard feature of his work. I think that most full descriptions of what Larkin does would include this as a major weapon in his armoury, or option in his repertoire, or temptation to which he yields. I think he does it very well, but also that it might risk being routinised by its frequency.

Sure, isn't High Windows pretty much a textbook study in contrasts? Awkward cycle clips, religion, awkward cycle clips, transcendence, seriousness, death.

No one would remember it if it were just about bicycling and pants

That's a different poem. 'Church Going'.

'High Windows' is from about 20 years later.

Oh duh, sorry, serves me right for posting from work and away from the shelf

I will slink away into ignominy now

High Windows is about kids fucking

It is also name-checked by Jonatha Brooke on the uber-literary album by the Story, The Angel in the House, 1994ish

I finished THE NORTH SHIP, Larkin's 1945 collection. It would be fair to say: if you think you know Larkin (as most people do), but haven't read these poems (as some people haven't), then there is an aspect of Larkin you don't know.

A couple of years ago I read the Collected Poems of Larkin. Its a much more approachable volume than the Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, which I also have. For one thing the poems tend to be short, and the obscure moments generally surrounded by relatable anecdotes from daily life. Also the generally dour and wistful mood carries you through - even if you don't understand everything you feel like you understand the feeling.

since this thread was bumped recently i got a copy (collected poems) and have been enjoying it immensely.

Arrivals, Departures

This town has docks where channel boats come sidling;
Tame water lanes, tall sheds, the traveller sees
(His bag of samples knocking at his knees),
And hears, still under slackened engines gliding,
His advent blurted to the morning shore.

And we, barely recalled from sleep there, sense
Arrivals lowing in a doleful distance –
Horny dilemmas at the gate once more.
Come and choose wrong, they cry, come and choose wrong;
And so we rise. At night again they sound,

Calling the traveller now, the outward bound:
O not for long, they cry, I not for long –
And we are nudged from comfort, never knowing
How safely we may disregard their blowing,
Or if, this night, happiness too is going.

The first stanza's last line.

"Horny dilemmas" as a bashful allusion to sexual frustration seems typical.