PHILIP LARKIN This Be the Verse
Philip Arthur Larkin, British poet and novelist, was born on 9th August 1922 in Coventry, and was educated at St. ... In 1945 Larkin published his first collection of poetry The North Ship. ... In 1955 his reputation as a poet was finally established with the appearance of The Less Deceived and Larkin came to be held as the most distinguished and representative poet of his day. He was the leading member of the Movement, whose colloquial tones and understated technical virtuosity are epitomised in his verse The Whitsun Weddings (1964), his most highly valued collection. His last collection of verse, High Windows (1974), employed a tone of great directness to heighten the emphasis on mortality underlying much of his previous works. ... The style of Larkin’s writing has drastically changed during the years. As Larkin’s verse develops, the range of his tonal register expands. ... The last of these collections, High Windows, which also includes the poem I am writing on in this essay, changed Larkin’s life more decisively than any of his previous ones. ... When Larkin published High Windows in 1974, “what everyone noticed, besides its general excellence, was its profusion of foul language” (Burt). And among his poems that contain such a language is certainly also the poem “This Be The Verse”, in which Larkin “describes a drama of private feeling and commonplace language” (Motion 1993: 373). ... “The quality of Larkin’s poetry as a whole rests less on its lack of difficulty than on its formal excellence and earthy sincerity of content, a sincerity that arises from the personal tone Larkin employs” (Blake 2001: 8). In other words, Larkin sticks to the traditional definition of poetry as the genre that expresses personal experiences and feelings in a very musical manner. “Most of Larkin’s poetry consists of portraying a concrete personal situation as a source of reflection” (Blake 2001: 8), however, “This Be The Verse” is a poem, in which “the often painfully personal air of Larkin’s other poems” (Blake 2001: 8) is not actually seen. ... As one critic argued, the speaker of “This Be The Verse” “uses sardonic humour to mask the bitterness of his attitude to experience… and the poem uses its speaker to take a snipe at the very fatalism of which Larkin has been accused” (quoted in Swarbrick 1995: 137, 138). ... But is this really what Larkin wanted to say with this poem? ... (Swarbrick 1995: 138) When commenting on the poem’s humour, Larkin said “it’s perfectly serious as well” (quoted in Swarbrick 1995:138).