Philip Larkin

I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.

Philip Larkin (1922-08-09 – 1985-12-02) was an English poet.

Quotes

I came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of research was needed to form an opinion on anything, & therefore I abandoned politics altogether as a topic of conversation.

• 'What was the rock my gliding childhood struck...'
  • Line from an early poem, letter to J.B. Sutton, 16 April 1941

• Life and literature is a question of what one thrills to, and further than that no man shall ever go without putting his foot in a turd.
  • Letter to J.B.Sutton, 21 December 1942

• If we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough. Most people, I'm convinced, don't think about life at all. They grab what they think they want and the subsequent consequences keep them busy in an endless chain till they're carried out feet first.
  • Letter to J.B.Sutton 30 October 1949

if we seriously contemplate life it appears an agony too great to be supported, but for the most part our minds gloss such things over & until the ice finally lets us through we skate about merrily enough.

• I think … someone might do a little research on some of the inherent qualities of sex – its cruelty, its bullyingness, for instance. It seems to me that bending someone else to your will is the very stuff of sex, by force or neglect if you are male, by spitefulness or nagging or scenes if you are female. And what's more, both sides would sooner have it that way than not at all. I wouldn't. And I suspect that means not that I can enjoy sex in my own quiet way but that I can't enjoy it at all. It's like rugby football: either you like kicking & being kicked, or your soul cringes away from the whole affair. There's no way of quietly enjoying rugby football.
  • Letter to Monica Jones (1 November 1951) as quoted in "Philip Larkin's women" (23 October 2010)

• You know I don’t care at all for politics, intelligently. I found that at school when we argued all we did was repeat the stuff we had, respectively, learnt from the Worker, the Herald, Peace News, the Right Book Club (that was me, incidentally: I knew these dictators, Marching Spain, I can remember them now) and as they all contradicted each other all we did was get annoyed. I came to the conclusion that an enormous amount of research was needed to form an opinion on anything, & therefore I abandoned politics altogether as a topic of conversation. It’s true that the writers I grew up to admire were either non-political or Left-wing, & that I couldn’t find any Right-wing writer worthy of respect, but of course most of the ones I admired were awful fools or somewhat fakey, so I don’t know if my prejudice for the Left takes its origin there or not. But if you annoy me by speaking your mind in the other interest, it’s not because I feel sacred things are being mocked but because I can’t reply, not (as usual) knowing enough. … By the way, of course I’m terribly conventional, by necessity! Anyone afraid to say boo to a goose is conventional.
  • Letter from Belfast ( 5 August 1953) to Monica Jones

• - to start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
  • Letter to Winifred Arnott, 7 October 1953

• You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
  • Letter to Monica Jones, 22 October 1967

• superstition,like belief , must die
  • poem church going "inquiry about role of religion in our daily life today "

• I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
  • Interview in The Review, published by Ian Hamilton (1972)

• Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.
  • Interview with Miriam Gross, "A voice for our time" in The Observer (16 December 1979); republished in Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces, 1955-1982 (1983)

The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

• Our almost-instinct almost true:
  What will survive of us is love.
  • "An Arundel Tomb" (20 February 1956)

• 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.
  • "Love Songs in Age" (1 January 1957)

• Get stewed:
  Books are a load of crap.
  • "A Study of Reading Habits" (20 August 1960)

• Never such innocence,
  Never before or since,
  As changed itself to past
  Without a word — the men
  Leaving the gardens tidy,
  The thousands of marriages,
  Lasting a little while longer:
  Never such innocence again.
  • "MCMXIV"

This Be The Verse

• They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
     They may not mean to, but they do.
  They fill you with the faults they had
     And add some extra, just for you.
  • "This Be The Verse," High Windows (1974) [April ? 1971]

The Mower

• The first day after a death, the new absence
  Is always the same; we should be careful

  Of each other, we should be kind
  While there is still time.

  • "The Mower," Humberside (Hull Literary Club magazine) (Autumn 1979) [12 June 1979]

External links

• "Unknown Philip Larkin poem found in shoebox" by Richard Lea, in The Guardian (6 December 2010)