Product Description
One of the best-known and best-loved poets of the English-speaking world, Philip Larkin had only a small number of poems published during his lifetime. Collected Poems brings together not only all his books--The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows--but also his uncollected poems from 1940 to 1984.

This new edition reflects Larkin's own ordering for his poems and is the first collection to present the body of his work with the organization he preferred. Preserving everything he published in his lifetime, the new Collected Poems is an indispensable contribution to the legacy of an icon of twentieth-century poetry.
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Customer Reviews (34)

Tremendously Gratifying Experience
I was curious about Larkin because I kept hearing that he wrote salty poetry, and managed to be famous at the same time. None of the poems I ever heard seemed particularly blue, but my curiosity finally got the best of me. What a surprise. Plain spoken, carefully crafted, clearly the work of a fellow life long bachelor which gave him a wry sense of humor about things that others might take all too seriously. And touching as well. "Born Yesterday," a dedication poem for a child is exceptionally tender--none of that stiffness that others evince in occasional poems. His evocations of jazz come from an equally honest place, completely uncliched writing. And what work a day poet couldn't see himself in Larkin's two toad poems about the need to sweat out a living while aspiring to art. And yes, there are a couple of poems with what might be considered salty diction--by my grandmother; but I'd rather have such straightforward honesty in my poets any day instead of the turgid, recondite, I'm smarter than you and I'm not about to let you forget it stuff that's sure to be consigned to the footnotes of history while they're still reading Larkin for pleasure.

Misleading
Why does my version of this very book by Thwaites only contain 120+ of Larkin's poems and not the full 240 or so. Pretty lame to advertise it as otherwise Amazon. Pretty lame.

An elegaic poet of considerable power and grace.
I highly recommend this to readers who value traditonal use of the English language and rare gifts with expressing this melancholy view of his life and times.

Buy This Book Now!!
Philip Larkin wrote some of the most perfect poems written in the English language, and this well-edited collection proves it. If that sounds like hyperbole, then you really need to get ahold of some of Larkin's poems ("Sad Steps" or "Church Going" are both good places to start). If they don't change your mind, then we have very different definitions of great poetry.

Though I'm willing to admit that his first book (which is included in this collection), The North Ship, is apprentice-work and isn't top-notch, every book after it is the work of a virtuoso, chock-full of original, insightful, and flawlessly crafted poetry.

Though Larkin might not be for the feint of heart (he has a rather dark take on the world, very similar to that of his poet-hero Thomas Hardy), his poems are brazenly honest, intelligent, funny, and inspired. And whether or not you agree with everything in them, his poems are still breathtaking, often celebratory works of art that need to be read to be believed.

Easy beyond recognition
Some say Philip Larkin is not even a poet, but a kind of social observer. Perhaps they do not catch the richness hidden in a very simple verse or do not accept a non-obscure modern writer. This editon shows poems in chronological order, which is good, but lacks more information about Larkin. ... Read more

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This story of Katherine Lind and Robin Fennel, of winter and summer, of war and peace, of exile and holidays. ... 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

Product Description
Philip Larkin met Monica Jones at University College Leicester in autumn 1946, when they were both twenty-four; he was the newly-appointed assistant librarian and she was an English lecturer. In 1950 Larkin moved to Belfast, and thence to Hull, while Monica remained in Leicester, becoming by turns his correspondent, lover and closest confidante, in a relationship which lasted over forty years until the poet's death in 1985. This remarkable unpublished correspondence only came to light after Monica Jones' death in 2001, and consists of nearly two thousand letters, postcards and telegrams, which chronicle - day by day, sometimes hour by hour - every aspect of Larkin's life and the convolutions of their relationship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Top Shelf Poetry
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RWD222NRY2HI Bernard Chapin saying hello. The Whitsun Weddings is one of my favorite books. I've probably read it about 10 times...and you just might too.

Like an enormous yes
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R21EZJ5F5J9I6V Bernard Chapin saying hello. The Whitsun Weddings is one of my favorite books. I've probably read it about 10 times...and you just might too.

Correction
Larkin was no devotee of Yeats or Dylan Thomas in the period this collection dates from.

What survives...
My introduction to Philip Larkin and his collection of verse,' The Whitsun Weddings' I owe to my friend David Evennett, one-time Member of Parliament for Erith and Crayford. Back when I was researcher for a Member of Parliament, I had an avocation as a poet. David discovered this, and recommended Larkin as a poetic voice worthy of attention. (His researcher acted surprised, blurting out loud much to our amusement, 'And here I always took you for a Philistine!') I have been grateful ever since, as I frequently return to this slim volume of verse for inspiration and reflection.

This volume of poetry includes 32 poems. A small book first published in 1964, it has proven so popular (something rare in poetry circles) that it has been reprinted four times during the 1970s, four times during the 1980s, and continues to be reprinted periodically up to the present day.

John Betjeman, one-time poet laureate of England, once commented of Larkin that 'this tenderly observant poet writes clearly, rhythmically, and thoughtfully about what all of us can understand.' This is the key to Larkin's verse -- accessibility. There are no obvious poetical devices that overpower the meaning or the language; there are no forced schemes, however brilliantly executed, that impose themselves on the reader. The gentle rhythms carry the reader like a slow-moving train on a well-cushioned track.

The poem `Mr. Bleaney' is the one David first drew attention to when I brought in the small book a few days after his recommendation.

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.

These words resonate with me at different times in my life, as they did with David. There is a desire to make someone of oneself, to have something to show for one's life. In the development of Mr. Bleaney's life, and his successor in the rented room, one can take stock and reappraise one's own life. What is the value, and how is it calculated?

Larkin's poetry frequently turns to the matter of religion and spirituality, without getting overly fussy or remote. In the poem Water, Larkin gives a very brief description of a spirit-freeing and pluralistic yet communal experience.

Larkin addresses the issues of age and youth, of love and loneliness, of despair and hope, all within the space of these 32 wonderful poems. The poem `Wild Oats' incorporates all of these themes in one compact, bittersweet tale of life. Who could fail to wonder at the matter-of-fact and poignant description of the man who couldn't commit to one woman, having met only briefly her more beautiful friend, and seven years later is still unable to forget? The poem `A Study of Reading Habits' likewise, dealing with dreams conjured up through reading during youth gone the way of reality in middle age, ending with a too-familiar sour-grapes feeling, `Books are a load of crap'.

Of course, I mustn't neglect the title piece, `The Whitsun Weddings'. Perfectly capturing mood and manner of weddings, the routine and the cycle of life, Larkin in fact uses the image of travelling by rail as a subtle motif for the journey through life, the Whitsun Weddings being a stop through which many (a dozen couples in this poem) proceed on their way to lives that will be lived out in `London spread out like the sun / Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat.'

Larkin's final word in this collection is a very worthy word -- one that will preach, in the words of a cleric friend of mine -- and one that brings to very sweet encapsulation his image of the Arundel Tomb, carefully and tenderly drawn for us in words, evoking images of when it was first created to how it is perceived today in its state of weathered testimony of the couple buried together:

Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

May these poems survive.

When he is good, he is very, very good.
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings (Faber, 1964)

Philip Larkin's fifth collection of poetry, The Whitsun Weddings, was the one that firmly established him as one of Britain's major poets. He remains today one of the best-known and most popular British neoformalists. A devotee of Yeats, Hardy, and Dylan Thomas, Larkin never wears his influences too far away from his sleeve, but don't begrudge him that; marvel, instead, that in the turbulent anything-goes sixties lived a poet, misanthrope, and mild-mannered librarian (all in the same body, no less!) who swam against a stream of free verse and wrote, arguably, better formal verse than anyone since Swinburne.

Larkin is a master of enjambment; if you encountered a random Larkin poem isolated from a collection, you might well not realize it's a formal poem until you're well into it, a hallmark of the best formal work. It reads easily and well, and Larkin never allows the meter and rhyme to get in the way of image; in short, Larkin combines the best traits of both lyric and narrative poetry, and packages them up neatly for the reader in small verse of purest pleasure.

Okay, I've just spent two paragraphs describing the best of Larkin's work. Thankfully, this collection is more "best" than "worst." But one of the tragedies of the formal poet, and one no formal poet (save, perhaps, Dante Alighieri) has ever been able to avoid, is that when you're not on top of your game, slipping a notch or two down the ladder of quality leads to the steepest of descents. The sublime can become the ridiculous far faster in formal verse than in free verse, leading to a judgment of "when he screws up, man, does he REALLY screw up." Such is the case with Larkin. The dulcet tones and free-flowing nature of his best work curdle in the mouth when he's off form, leaving trite rhymes, dull rhythms, and some of the most godawful thumping lines one is likely to see outside Helen Steiner Rice.

Still, as I said, there is far less bad than good in The Whitsun Weddings, and it does deserve its place in the annals of British literature. For those who wonder where all the formal verse has gone, Philip Larkin is one of the four or five modern poets to whom anyone can point to say "verse may be out of favor, but believe me, it is still alive and well." *** ... Read more

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For more than 25 years, York Notes have been helping students throughout the UK to get the inside track on the written word. Firmly established as the nation's favourite and most comprehensive range of literature study guides, each and every York Note has been carefully researched and written by experts to make sure that you get the most wide-ranging critical analysis, the most detailed commentary and the most helpful key points and checklists. York Notes Advanced offer a fresh and accessible approach to English Literature. Written by established literature experts, they introduce students to a more sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Wonderful collection!
As a new comer to Philip Larkin I wasn't quite sure what to expect of his work.However, since receiving High Windows it has been a delightful addition to my collection.I've found myself at times tossing it in my bag to take with me only to read and reread it out of sheer enjoyment of this man's talent!

Oddly uninspired given his previous work.
Philip Larkin, High Windows (Faber, 1974)

Larkin, the celebrated librarian-poet, got somewhat cranky in his middle age. He also got more experimental, both qualities that make for fine poetry. Add to these scurrilousness, a wicked sense of humor, and an ear for rhythm matched only in the modern world's finest poets, and you have a recipe for greatness.

So why doesn't Larkin always pull it off? Good question. When he's on, he's very, very on, but when he's off, it's a mess. Unlike most poets, Larkin seems to have been able to switch back and forth between formal and free verse at will a number of times, but he did make the grade-school gaffe of trying to combine the two more than once. And a good deal of his "politically incorrect" (for lack of a better term) poetry smacks more of the juvenile than the Shakespearean:

"Jan von Hogspeuw staggers to the door
And pisses at the dark. Outside, the rain
Courses in cart-ruts down the deep mud land.
Inside, Dirk Dogstoerd pours himself some more..."
("The Card-Players")

Despite these excursions into the ridiculous, however, Larkin does still exhibit his mastery more often than not in this slim volume, and it's worth picking up either for the established Larkin fan or the newcomer who wonders what happened to metrical poetry after World War II. ***

Make time!
Phillip Larkin rocks.When I was a sophmore in college I burned down my dorm room and my copy of High Windows.It was truly tragic. This slim little volume contains some of Larkin's best work.It is wry, revealing,and sardonic in true Larkin fashion.I particularly like the title poemand None of the Books Have Time.Also, there's one in there about thestubborn stupidity of old folks that is absolutely delightful and hilariousthough the title escapes me at the moment.Anyway, this small book thatwon't take up either much time to read or much space on the shelf is adelightful and highly recommended piece.One of my all-time favorites. ... Read more

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"Mr. Motion has generously enlarged our understanding of . . . this impressive writer's life. He is a clear, fluent writer; evocative, acute, sympathetic, but absolutely unblinking about the notorious weaknesses and cruelties (as well as the immense wit and hard work) of his subject."--Richard Locke, The Wall Street Journal. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A life renounced
Andrew Motion does justice to the remarkable life of Philip Larkin in this moving biography. Since his death 25 years ago, Larkin has been bestowed with mythic status as the 'hermit of Hull'. A recluse who hid himself from the world to concentrate on his poetry, which line by line arrows home like no other at the bleak, circumscribed conditions of average human lives.

This biography reveals the emotional tumult beneath the surface of Larkin's 'ordinary' life. Renouncing the domestic comforts of a wife and children (his attitude to this revealed in his poetry such as Dockery and Son), Larkin lived most of his life behind the 'High Windows' of Pearson Park in Hull, working at an unassuming (though not ineffective) administrative job in Hull University Library. Much of his life was spent fearful of death - a 'Black sailed unfamiliar', and the final chapters, measured out by number virtually correlating to the years of Larkin's life, read almost like a thriller as Larkin physically weakened by cancer approaches death probably as the person who has most prepared himself in a lifelong sacrifice for the end of life.

Larkin's love life was most complex. Rather than sex beginning in 1963, as he implies in 'Annus Mirabilis', Larkin conducted a delicate weave of relationships with feisty lecturer Monica Jones, and his co-worker Maeve Brennan, never fully committing to any of his lovers lest they intrude on the bleak solitude Larkin believed necessary for his poetry.

And so it proved. Larkin's final years were even more miserable than the rest of his life as he became plagued by alcoholism and self regret. His was truly a 'writer's life', as the title denotes, sacrificing the standard pleasures of family companionship for his work - which bleakly and precisely, traditional form and modern in theme, delineates the universal sorrows and anxieties of life passing, and hopes slipping away.

No other modern British poet has had the courage or talent to stare down the barrels of life so squarely, without shirking from the truths he sees there. Truly our greatest postwar poet.

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

Product Description
When Philip Larkin's letters and a damning biography were published in the early 1990s, his enemies seized on the new disclosures with a frenzy hardly witnessed since the McCarthy era. Larkin was accused of being a misogynist and xenophobic, and his reputation as a poet was tarnished by his image as a human being. Richard Bradford's biography reveals that Larkin treated his prejudices and peculiarities with detached circumspection. Sometimes he shared them, self-mockingly, self-destructively, with his closest friends; he divided up his life so that some people knew him well but none completely. It was only in the poems that the parts began to resemble the whole. ""In this thoroughly researched...well-written depiction, fans will find much-from gossip to scholarship-to stoke their interest."" -Publishers Weekly. ""Bradford's book...places welcome emphases on matters that Motion glided over too lightly."" -The New York Review of Books. ... Read more

Product 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

Product Description
The reappearance of Philip Larkin's Required Writing will be welcomed by the late poet's many readers and admirers. The book's first two parts, "Recollections" and "Interviews," provide autobiographical glimpses of the very private Larkin's childhood, his youth at Oxford, the genesis of his forty-year career as a librarian, and the influences that initially steered his poetry.
The second half of the book reflects Larkin's literary standards and opinions in often witty and surprising, always beautifully wrought, essays and reviews. His subjects range from Emily Dickinson (were her first lines her best?) to the contemporary mystery novel. Required Writing concludes with a selection of pieces on jazz music.
"Larkin is a punctilious, honest critic. He prefers good clear writing to pretentious eyewash; he prefers tunes to discordant wailing; and he prefers home to abroad. Unlike the majority of critics, he is clear-sighted enough to say so." --A. N. Wilson, Sunday Telegraph
"I read the collection with growing excitement, agreement and admiration. It is the best contemporary account of the writer's true aims I have encountered." --John Mortimer, Sunday Times (London)
"Subtle, supple, craftily at ease, Required Writing is on a par with Larkin's poetry--which is just about as high as praise can go." --Clive James, Observer
Philip Larkin was the author of poetry collections, including High Windows, The Whitsun Weddings, and The Less Deceived; a book of essays entitled All What Jazz: A Record Diary; and two novels, Jill, and A Girl in Winter, published early in his career. Required Reading was originally published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
... Read more

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

Product Description
This collection is a corrective to the impression that Larkin was a jazz reactionary, based on his polemical introduction to "All What Jazz", a collection of "Daily Telegraph" reviews. These reviews for other papers show he enjoyed later jazz and wrote incisively about it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Larkin essays on jazz are insightful
For many years, Philip Larkin wrote reviews and essays on Jazz.He fell in love with the music as a young man.This love might seem odd, because Jazz is a distinctly American form of music (and Larkin almost never travelled abroad and never to America) and it is also dominated by African-Americans (Larkin has unkind things to say about minorities in his Collected Letters).Nevertheless, Larkin found in the music of Armstrong, Ellington, Basie, and others a joy that was missing from much of the rest of his life.One warning for serious Jazz fans -- for Larkin, the downfall of Jazz began with Charlie Parker.He had no interest in Parker, Mingus, Miles Davis, or almost anyone who recorded after the later 40's.In fact, he lumped Charlie Parker with Ezra Pound and Pablo Picasso as person with reputations as great artists, but whom he felt had a terrible effect on their art.In some ways, this book tells you as much about Larkin as Jazz.Nevertheless, the enthusiasm he had for Jazz, and his skill as an essayist make this an enjoyable book. ... Read more

Product Description
"The Sunday Sessions" consists of twenty-six poems, the contents of two tapes recorded by Philip Larkin in Hull in February 1980 - reportedly, each on a Sunday, after lunch with John Weeks, a sound engineer and colleague of the poet. The tapes, which contain work from Larkin's first major collection, "The North Ship", as well as poems from his best-known collections, "The Whitsun Weddings" and "High Windows", remained 'lost' for over two decades, lying on a shelf in the garage in which they were recorded. Since their rediscovery they have been the subject of widespread media attention, including a BBC Radio 4 Archive Hour documentary. Their contents are here published in full for the first time. The running time is approx 1 hour/1 disc. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

You can see how it was...
'This is the first time I have read before such a large audience,' Larkin once said on Radio 4. A tiny pause. 'And if I have anything to with it, the last.' He seemed to prefer the smallest audience possible whether it was George Hartley, his tape spools turning slowly as Larkin recited his verse, swallowing both his stammer and annoyance with the noisy recording conditions; or here after Sunday lunch in a converted garage with only his sound engineer friend John Weeks for company.

We too are an audience of one for any poet we read, but the complicity between reader and writer is where Larkin particularly thrives. It's implicit in his reasons for writing ('I suppose the kind of response I am seeking from the reader is, Yes, I know what you mean, life is like that') and explicit as he invites us inside to share his bleak though to me never entirely hopeless view ('You can see how it was', 'Think of being them', 'We know beyond doubt'). The rewards for going with him are the vivid journeys and consolations he provides.

'The Sunday Sessions' lifts that complicity to another level. Now we're with Larkin as his gently see-sawing delivery sets the scenes for his poems. These are rendered with extraordinary precision. In 'Mr Bleaney', we see 'Flowered curtains, thin and frayed/Fall to within five inches of the sill'. Condensing our waiting-room culture of patience into four brief lines, Larkin shows us, 'There are paperbacks, and tea at so much a cup/Like an airport lounge, but those who tamely sit/On rows of steel chairs turning the ripped mags/Haven't come far.' His pause in the last line of 'Home is so Sad' ensures we catch the god-awfulness of 'That vase'.

Then he gives the occupants of those settings a voice. Some are comic turns as he does Mr Bleaney's landlady, Warlock-Williams and booms 'here endeth' so we snigger even as 'the echoes snigger briefly'. Others are quizzical, delicate, finely balanced in debate with themselves. In 'An Arundel Tomb', the narrator has it out about the nature of love yet can't quite bring himself to come down on one side or the other, the optimism of the famous last line qualified by the preceding one. For the most part, the mood is benign. Only in 'The Old Fools' does Larkin himself seem to emerge from the poems, his voice rising as he heads for the final warning of 'We shall find out.' In that moment, it sounds as if he's telling us about his dread of endless extinction.

But don't be put off: the quotable lines and haunting images make this CD a must-have, the typo in the accompanying track-listing notwithstanding. Now all we need to do is persuade Faber to round up the rest of Larkin's readings on cassette and LP and reissue them digitally. ... Read more

Product Description
The book offers a detailed commentary on the poetry of Philip Larkin, exploring the political and cultural contexts which have shaped his contemporary reputation. Part 1, Life and Times, traces Larkin’s early years and follows his development, within his career as a university librarian, into one of the most important and popular voices in twentieth-century poetry. Part 2, Artistic Strategies, explores a range of methodologies and aesthetic influences by which Larkin was able to create poetry at once both accessible and profound. Part 3, Reading Larkin, provides detailed critical commentary on many of the poems from his three major collections, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows. Part 4, Reception, outlines the history of Larkin’s reputation from the mid-1950s to the present, examining the debates and ideological confrontations to which his poetry has given rise.
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Product Description
A novel in which a young man travels from his Midlands home to Oxford University, and finds himself out of his depth in its rarefied atmosphere. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Tumble After Jill, If You Will
Philip Larkin states in his 1975 Introduction to my copy of this book, marking its republication, by writing:

"As, despite its length, it remains in essence an unambitious short story, chapter-divisions have been dropped, leaving it merely as a narrative with breathing-spaces."

And, while one may do well to wonder exactly how "unambitious" it was when Larkin actually wrote it thirty odd years before tacking on this qualifier, it indeed remains a longish, disjointed short story.I would actually go further and dub it a string of loosely connected vignettes.The word that kept leaping to mind as I was reading it was:Inchoate.

I suppose the title "Jill" is as appropriate as any - though perhaps "John", if less Romantic, would at least possess the virtue of retaining the title of the character serving as a common thread herein - for Jill, both real and imagined, does not take up more than half the book.

Right:Young, fairly bright, extremely industrious lad wins scholarship to Oxford by swotting up for examinations.Once there, rooms with debonair, spendthrift playboy.Young lad, John Kemp, starts drinking, smoking, seeing the world from one angle and then another, invents an imaginary relation named Jill, writes letters to and from her, goes so far as to begin a diary by her. Then he meets a real girl with almost the same name and transfers his affections to her. Oh, by the bye, there's a war on and his hometown gets blitzed by the Jerries.

The section in which John ventures back to his hometown to see whether his parents are among the quick or the dead is the best vignette, as it were, in the book.The writing here is superb:

"The moon, by day a thin pith-coloured segment, hung brilliantly in the sky, spilling its light down on to the skeletons of roofs, blank walls and piles of masonry that undulated like a frozen sea.It had never seemed so bright.The wreckage looked like ruins of an age over and done with."

Top-drawer stuff!Then, John goes on a bender when back at Oxford, catches pneumonia after being pitched into the fountain (after pasting Jill - her real name is Gillian - with a sloppy drunk kiss).The story ends with his parents coming to visit their son in the infirmary with a wry little in-joke on the motto of Oxford for those that know their Latin and have seen the Oxford crest.

The problem here is that everything is so higgledy-piggledy.One vignette reminds one of Joyce and Stephen Daedalus, the next of Dante and his Beatrice and the next of Waugh and Brideshead Revisited - really the book to read if you're into this sort of thing.Still, the book has its moments, and Larkin has a surprisingly acute ear for dialogue.

Recommended for nostalgic anglophiles who aren't particularly fussy about thematic coherence.

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

Product Description
PRETENDING TO BE ME is an intimate, acerbic and occasionally scurrilous show about the poet, jazz aficionado and Hull University librarian, Philip Larkin. Larkin ('the magnificent Eeyore of British verse' - Daily Telegraph) has moved home; surrounded by packing cases, playing selections from his favourite jazz LPs, and making himself cups of tea - and later whiskies - he reflects wryly on writing and life. Hilarious and moving, the narrative shifts seamlessly between Larkin's outrageous wit and the poems, which Courtenay reads with powerful directness and simplicity. PHILIP LARKIN, one of the foremost figures in 20th-Century English poetry, feared his epitaph would be: 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad'. This, and other familiar poems, 'An Arundel Tomb', 'The Whitsun Weddings' and 'High Windows' are included in PRETENDING TO BE ME. ... Read more

Product 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).
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