Philip Larkin 1922-1985
by Donald Hall U Times Literary Supplement almost a decade ago. It begins: I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
The Less Deceived announced Philip Larkin in 1955. As a young man he had published The North Ship , poems lyrical and Yeatsian and not yet Larkinesque. The early work resembled other young Englishmen: neo-Romantic, even a bit wet Lucky Jim The Less Deceived was a small-press bookpublished by George Hartley who ran the Marvell Press and edited Listen , the best literary magazine in its timeit was published with a list of subscribers which included almost all English poets under forty: Amis, Bergonzi, Boyars, Brownjohn, Conquest, Davie, Enright, Hamburger, Hill, Jennings, MacBeth, Murphy, Thwaite, Tomlinson, Wain. (Thom Gunn was in California; Ted Hughes was not yet Ted Hughes.) And there were dons: Bateson, Dobree, Dodsworth, Fraser, Kermode, Leishmann. It was not long before Larkin became a popular poet in England, second only to Betjeman in public affection. When a good poet becomes popular there is always some silly reason as well as recognition of excellence. Dylan Thomas became a bestseller in this countrysurely the obscurest poet ever to sell ten thousand copiesbecause tales of drunkenness and irreverence sold copies. With Robert Frost, the carefully cultivated rural mannergussied up by the Luce publications until he resembled Scattergood Bainessold copies and had little to do with the real man. | |
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