Suzi,
My first encounter with Larkin's poems wasn't great either, but then several
of them grew on me.
Perhaps you have had the same initial experience with poetry by Frost,
Hardy, Tennyson, Keats, Wordsworth, Marvell, George Herbert...
These when persevered with prove rewarding in themselves, I have found, and
also prepare readers for poetry of the last few decades.
You probably want to recommend some reading to me to widen MY sense of the
past and the present? Go ahead -
Best wishes from Max R
On 19/05/11 6:30 PM, "Suzi Hall" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This poetry is so conservative and boring there is no point reading it
>
> On 19/05/2011, at 5:45 PM, Max Richards wrote:
>
>> What more suitable prompting for tears than the finding of evidence
>> that
>> one's parents loved each other! By all means stifle tears in certain
>> circumstances, but do make time, Chris, for some tearful blessings
>> on them
>> surviving now merely in you and maybe your siblings.
>> And write them a poem. Best from Max
>> The one that comes to my mind is by Philip Larkin,
>>
>> Love Songs in Age...
>>
>> She kept her songs, they kept so little space,
>> The covers pleased her:
>> One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
>> One marked in circles by a vase of water,
>> One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
>> And coloured, by her daughter -
>> So they had waited, till, in widowhood
>> She found them, looking for something else, and stood
>>
>> Relearning how each frank submissive chord
>> Had ushered in
>> Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
>> And the unfailing sense of being young
>> Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
>> That hidden freshness sung,
>> That certainty of time laid up in store
>> As when she played them first. But, even more,
>>
>> The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
>> Broke out, to show
>> Its bright incipience sailing above,
>> Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
>> And set unchangeably in order. So
>> To pile them back, to cry,
>> Was hard, without lamely admitting how
>> It had not done so then, and could not now.
>>
>>
>> On 19/05/11 5:57 PM, "Christopher C Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, 2011-05-14 at 20:22 +1000, Max Richards wrote:
>>>> Good luck, Chris
>>>
>>> Right now I am going over the long out of date cheque books and bank
>>> statements of my mother's and burning them.
>>>
>>> In between I find not only letters from myself to my parents but love
>>> letters and cards between my parents. I am so fortunate that I had
>>> parents that loved each other as much as they loved their children.
>>>
>>> I am told, that to prevent crying, push your tongue hard up into your
>>> mouth and stare into the middle distance.
>>>
>>
>> --
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