Basically, I agree with Mark here, in that I too don't get too excited
by Larkin's work, in as much as it does not help me to write. I have,
however, taught his work in courses on modern poetry, & he is a useful
figure for placing a kind of British poetry & its reception, &,
certainly, there is a particular kind of lyric sensibility at work in
his poems which is interesting. He does what he does better than most
of the others who tried, but whenever I had to read his own opinions,
they were so at odds with mine I just had to laugh is all...
As to 'normal,' well I'm not sure what that means, but I get along....
Doug
On 18-Jan-05, at 2:42 PM, Mark Weiss wrote:
> Your argument seems to be that you find Larkin therapeutic and that I
> don't. I'll admit to the latter. But beyond what may be a blind-spot
> or too
> easy an identification on one or another of our parts, I think that
> consciously or not we all tend to read (especially when it's poets
> reading
> other poetry) for what we find useful in our own practice. Probably
> what I
> mean by boring is "nothing for me here."
>
> Larkin's character is quite beside the point--I probably would have
> enjoyed
> dinner with him far more than with the Pound of the war years and their
> immediate aftermath. Comparing his poetry to Pound's, however, seems a
> bit
> silly, regardless of how much one enjoys one or the other--Pound was
> instrumental in adding to our possible choices an entirely new way to
> conceive of what we do and a whole new set of practices.
>
> Mark
>
>
> At 11:42 AM 1/18/2005, you wrote:
>> Well, yes, I do very often worry about being normal, though my
>> intellect
>> might reject that term - but worries are not intellectual. Which
>> might in
>> part account for my finding Larkin's poetry very beautiful, very
>> frightening and powerful.
>>
>> I like the essay for saying what seems obvious to me, that there are
>> eminent poets who on any reasonable assessment have done far more evil
>> things than Larkin ever did. In fact, his petty meannesses,
>> discreditable
>> and ugly though they are, are something I just don't dwell on at all,
>> so
>> convinced am I that everyone else is AT LEAST as bad as that, though
>> of
>> course often in very different ways. Petty evil of the Larkin kind
>> usually
>> goes to its grave still in disguise. I hope no-one feels insulted by
>> this
>> insinuation - you are a saint, so forgive me!
>>
>> But I don't really accept the argument of the essay - I mean, that
>> we're
>> more disgusted about Larkin because his poems invite an identification
>> between author and reader, whereas e.g. Pound's do not. I think
>> Larkin is
>> easy to read and Pound difficult to read, but I think it is possible
>> and
>> quite permissible to read Pound in the same way as Larkin and to feel
>> that
>> large swathes of his poetry written in the thirties and forties
>> invite the
>> reader to participate in Pound's own brand of frontier Fascism. It's
>> more
>> common to read the Cantos in a quite different way, cooller and more
>> pictorial, perhaps (I don't know) something like the approach that
>> Mark
>> Weiss brings to bear on Larkin's poetry with such unrewarding results
>> for
>> himself. I don't think any way of reading is right or wrong, we read
>> as we
>> can't help doing but this has little to do with authors, it has more
>> to do
>> with what's worked for us in the past, the kind of things we care
>> about
>> and the ways we've learned to reach out for them.
>
>
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
(780) 436 3320
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
The poet is ecstatic, having dreamt of this visit for weeks.
He takes Erato’s face, dribbling and wild, between his hands
and kisses her gently as if she were a runaway teenager.
Diana Hartog
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