What do you think?
Rate this book
The Less Deceived
Philip Larkin's second collection, The Less Deceived was published by The Marvell Press in 1955, and now appears for the first time in Faber covers.
The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again.
from 'At Grass'
The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about
- The other seeming to look on -
And stands anonymous again.
from 'At Grass'
45 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
About the author
Philip Larkin
118 books651 followersPhilip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL, was an English poet, novelist and jazz critic. He spent his working life as a university librarian and was offered the Poet Laureateship following the death of John Betjeman, but declined the post. Larkin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century. He first came to prominence with the release of his third collection The Less Deceived in 1955. The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows followed in 1964 and 1974. In 2003 Larkin was chosen as "the nation's best-loved poet" in a survey by the Poetry Book Society, and in 2008 The Times named Larkin as the greatest post-war writer.
Larkin was born in city of Coventry, England, the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884–1948), city treasurer of Coventry, who came from Lichfield, and his wife, Eva Emily Day (1886–1977), of Epping. From 1930 to 1940 he was educated at King Henry VIII School in Coventry, and in October 1940, in the midst of the Second World War, went up to St John's College, Oxford, to read English language and literature. Having been rejected for military service because of his poor eyesight, Larkin was able, unlike many of his contemporaries, to follow the traditional full-length degree course, taking a first-class degree in 1943. Whilst at Oxford he met Kingsley Amis, who would become a lifelong friend and frequent correspondent. Shortly after graduating he was appointed municipal librarian at Wellington, Shropshire. In 1946, he became assistant librarian at University College, Leicester and in 1955 sub-librarian at Queen's University, Belfast. In March 1955, Larkin was appointed librarian at The University of Hull, a position he retained until his death.
Larkin was born in city of Coventry, England, the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884–1948), city treasurer of Coventry, who came from Lichfield, and his wife, Eva Emily Day (1886–1977), of Epping. From 1930 to 1940 he was educated at King Henry VIII School in Coventry, and in October 1940, in the midst of the Second World War, went up to St John's College, Oxford, to read English language and literature. Having been rejected for military service because of his poor eyesight, Larkin was able, unlike many of his contemporaries, to follow the traditional full-length degree course, taking a first-class degree in 1943. Whilst at Oxford he met Kingsley Amis, who would become a lifelong friend and frequent correspondent. Shortly after graduating he was appointed municipal librarian at Wellington, Shropshire. In 1946, he became assistant librarian at University College, Leicester and in 1955 sub-librarian at Queen's University, Belfast. In March 1955, Larkin was appointed librarian at The University of Hull, a position he retained until his death.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
April 21, 2019
How could I have neglected this great poet for so long? After all, I have an abiding love for 20th century verse, and I remember encountering—and admiring—that masterpiece of his, “Church Going,” more than two decades ago.
I suspect much of my neglect may be due to my knee-jerk preferences in mid-century verse: I favor the American over the British, the surrealist over the rhetorical, the bi-polar over the cynical. But I suspect there are other reasons that run deeper. For years, you see, I strove to be playful, guileless, and ardent. This was hard work at times, and required a steady diet of denial.
During those years, in my reading, I sought out outrageous images and shunned clear-eyed assessments; I sauntered, oblivious, through the topiary gardens of the heart and shunned the desert blooms of the soul. Now that I am in my sixties, however, my inner landscape seems simpler and starker, years of drought having greatly reduced the local population of illusions. And—behold!--the poetry of Philip Larkin looks better all the time.
This is a very short collection (not Larkin's first, but the first one he liked), and I would not wish any of these twenty-nine sharply crafted lyrics away. The title is a reference to Hamlet (Ophelia, when Hamlet says he never loved her, replies “I was the more deceived”) and most of the poems here deal in some way with deception. All of us fall prey to it, Larkin believes, but the sufferer is invariably “less deceived” than her oppressor who, filled with desire—specifically lust in the poem “Deception”--ends up deluded and filled with sadness: “stumbling up the breathless stair/ to burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.” Indeed Larkin can be eloquent--and daring--on the subject of lust, as he is in “Dry Point”:
Endlessly, time-honored irritant,
A bubble is restively forming at your tip.
Burst it as fast as we can--
It will grow again, until we begin dying.
Larkin can at times be mordantly humorous. In “If My Darling” he speculates about what his girl might think if she could view the vile contents of his mind (“monkey-brown, fish-grey, a string of infected circles/ Loitering like bullies, about to coagulate”), in “Toad” he compares his day-job to an intrusive amphibian (“why should I let the toad work squat on my life?), and in “I Remember, I Remember,” he excuses Coventry, the town he lived in for the painfully uneventful first eighteen years of his life, from any specific responsibility (“Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.”)
Larkin can be romantic too, yet it is always a desperate romanticism, infected with loss. Perhaps the most moving poems in this collection are the three (“Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album,” “Maiden Name,” and “Latest Face”) which he wrote for Winifred Arnott, a friend from his Belfast days who married someone else. I particularly love the conclusion to “Photograph Album”:
...So I am left
To mourn (without a chance of consequence)
You, balanced on a bike against a fence;
To wonder if you'd spot the theft
Of this one of you bathing; to condense,
In short, a past that no one now can share,
No matter whose your future; calm and dry,
It holds you like a heaven, and you lie
Unvariably lovely there,
Smaller and clearer as the years go by.
Still, the collection's longest poem,“Church Going”—slightly more than two pages—is the obvious masterpiece. A bicyclist out for a country ride visits a ruined church, and speculates about what such spaces might be used for once they no longer serve their present purpose. The poem reads like a meditative knell for Christianity, and yet the cyclist says he believes these old stone structures will never be completely abandoned:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
February 14, 2011
But o, photography! as no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull and hold-it smiles as frauds,
and will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines and Hall's-distemper boards,
...
In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being over; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.
Against what some people might think about me, I'm really not a very smart person. I'm just emotionally stunted and read a lot to the exclusion to most everything else in life. Other people focus on their bettering themselves, or jobs, or sports, or whatnot and I chug and plod along reading book after book, telling myself that it's worthier to read depressing literature than say knowing all the statistical minutiae of some sport. Yes, it affords me a certain internal feeling of superiority over the group of guys sitting behind me on the bus last night on the way to a sort of disappointing mixed martial arts fight when their level of conversation with each other was mostly quoting the same 'funny' lines from the recent Will Farrel and Marky Mark movie but I think I'd feel intellectually superior to them even if all I ever did was read cereal boxes, I mean repeating stupid catch phrases was something I remember doing when I was about twleve and the Ghostbusters and Three Amigos were the height of comedy for me (and as a side note to this side note, what was ever funny about 'Where's the Beef?' I'm remembering being in art class in like fourth grade or so and everyone repeating it over and over again and finding it hysterical. Was it really that funny? And the same phenomena I can remember in seventh grade with people just saying 'Time to make the donuts' to each other, was it really that funny? Did anyone just chuckle at reading those lines now? I won't judge you if you did, I just don't know why people found repeating things like that funny).
The point of this self-derogatory little spiel is not a lame attempt to fish for compliments but to point out that I'm not really that smart and anything I have to put a lot of work into hem and haw and procrastinate about, or I just don't do engage in it. I'm probably like most people here. But, I feel like if I was smart I'd be able to read and understand poetry. But, I generally don't. It's too much trouble to do the unpacking necessary to 'get it' for me and it. I can slog through Infinite Jest, for example, and there isn't that much to it except to keep reading, one work after another, something I'd be doing for the same amount of time a day if I were reading a big gigantic book or reading Parker novel after Parker novel each day. But being a wanna-be elitist snob I feel like my retardation when it comes to poetry is a pretty major character flaw.
Saying all of that, the poems in this volume by Philip Larkin are for the most part pretty cut and dry and have themes of depression, resentment and dwelling on the past in a melancholy manner that I can relate to and understand. I loved the opening poem in the collection, which I quoted a bit from above, "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album", it was pretty straight forward (I have no idea what "Hall's-distemper boards" means though, I'm sure it would make me appreciate the poem more but I'm too fucking lazy to figure it out) and was about as wistfully melancholy as a song written by Morrissey. His ode to oblivion, "Wants"-- yep I get it and it speaks to the depressing side of me, A+. And there are other poems that in their cut and dry sort of narrative style I get right behind, I understand, I get, and I can say, hey I can read and enjoy poetry! But then there are poems like "Myxomatosis" that I like some of the lines in but I just feel stupid wondering what the words in the poem have to do with a deadly mucus based disease in rabbits (I actually looked up the word, I'm at least getting better about looking up words I don't know, for years I would just read over them and figure that if I didn't know what the word meant it couldn't be that important)? But even in the poems that I enjoyed and 'got' a part of me can't help feeling like if I read them for a class the teacher would then go into all of this other shit about them and I'd realize that my enjoyment for the poems I liked would be the same as someone saying they like "Starry Night" because they like blue.
I know that what is really important is if I (the reader) enjoy what I read and not necessarily what the literature professors think of something but I still can't help feeling like an intellectual simpleton whenever I approach poetry.
And since it is now four minutes into Valentines Day, I'll cut and paste a poem from this book that I think is sort of tangentially appropriate for this day of consumerist romance and love (as in it's not about consumerist love, nor really about love at all, but has a certain nice bitterness that I think is relevant (you can also listen to this song, which I was hoping to find a non-live version of, but it's still pretty listenable).
Maiden Name
Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.
Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you're past and gone,
It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.
Faithful and disappointing! that records
Dull days as dull and hold-it smiles as frauds,
and will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines and Hall's-distemper boards,
...
In every sense empirically true!
Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate,
These misty parks and motors, lacerate
Simply by being over; you
Contract my heart by looking out of date.
Against what some people might think about me, I'm really not a very smart person. I'm just emotionally stunted and read a lot to the exclusion to most everything else in life. Other people focus on their bettering themselves, or jobs, or sports, or whatnot and I chug and plod along reading book after book, telling myself that it's worthier to read depressing literature than say knowing all the statistical minutiae of some sport. Yes, it affords me a certain internal feeling of superiority over the group of guys sitting behind me on the bus last night on the way to a sort of disappointing mixed martial arts fight when their level of conversation with each other was mostly quoting the same 'funny' lines from the recent Will Farrel and Marky Mark movie but I think I'd feel intellectually superior to them even if all I ever did was read cereal boxes, I mean repeating stupid catch phrases was something I remember doing when I was about twleve and the Ghostbusters and Three Amigos were the height of comedy for me (and as a side note to this side note, what was ever funny about 'Where's the Beef?' I'm remembering being in art class in like fourth grade or so and everyone repeating it over and over again and finding it hysterical. Was it really that funny? And the same phenomena I can remember in seventh grade with people just saying 'Time to make the donuts' to each other, was it really that funny? Did anyone just chuckle at reading those lines now? I won't judge you if you did, I just don't know why people found repeating things like that funny).
The point of this self-derogatory little spiel is not a lame attempt to fish for compliments but to point out that I'm not really that smart and anything I have to put a lot of work into hem and haw and procrastinate about, or I just don't do engage in it. I'm probably like most people here. But, I feel like if I was smart I'd be able to read and understand poetry. But, I generally don't. It's too much trouble to do the unpacking necessary to 'get it' for me and it. I can slog through Infinite Jest, for example, and there isn't that much to it except to keep reading, one work after another, something I'd be doing for the same amount of time a day if I were reading a big gigantic book or reading Parker novel after Parker novel each day. But being a wanna-be elitist snob I feel like my retardation when it comes to poetry is a pretty major character flaw.
Saying all of that, the poems in this volume by Philip Larkin are for the most part pretty cut and dry and have themes of depression, resentment and dwelling on the past in a melancholy manner that I can relate to and understand. I loved the opening poem in the collection, which I quoted a bit from above, "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album", it was pretty straight forward (I have no idea what "Hall's-distemper boards" means though, I'm sure it would make me appreciate the poem more but I'm too fucking lazy to figure it out) and was about as wistfully melancholy as a song written by Morrissey. His ode to oblivion, "Wants"-- yep I get it and it speaks to the depressing side of me, A+. And there are other poems that in their cut and dry sort of narrative style I get right behind, I understand, I get, and I can say, hey I can read and enjoy poetry! But then there are poems like "Myxomatosis" that I like some of the lines in but I just feel stupid wondering what the words in the poem have to do with a deadly mucus based disease in rabbits (I actually looked up the word, I'm at least getting better about looking up words I don't know, for years I would just read over them and figure that if I didn't know what the word meant it couldn't be that important)? But even in the poems that I enjoyed and 'got' a part of me can't help feeling like if I read them for a class the teacher would then go into all of this other shit about them and I'd realize that my enjoyment for the poems I liked would be the same as someone saying they like "Starry Night" because they like blue.
I know that what is really important is if I (the reader) enjoy what I read and not necessarily what the literature professors think of something but I still can't help feeling like an intellectual simpleton whenever I approach poetry.
And since it is now four minutes into Valentines Day, I'll cut and paste a poem from this book that I think is sort of tangentially appropriate for this day of consumerist romance and love (as in it's not about consumerist love, nor really about love at all, but has a certain nice bitterness that I think is relevant (you can also listen to this song, which I was hoping to find a non-live version of, but it's still pretty listenable).
Maiden Name
Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.
Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you're past and gone,
It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.
April 18, 2020
There is great variety in this collection.
Born Yesterday is a Larkin-esque reworking of Yeats’ ‘A Prayer for My Daughter’; Myxomatosis an astonishingly vivid impression of a dying rabbit; the title poem (Deceptions) is about a rape victim who is ’less deceived’ than her rapist.
Larkin is often described as ‘anti-Modernist’, but some of his poems could also be called ‘anti-Romantic’, e.g. I Remember, I Remember, where he recalls the place he grew up in, where he ‘wasn’t spoken to by an old hat’; and yet there is no bitterness against the place where his childhood was ‘unspent’, for that bitterness would itself be a form of romanticism.
Spring strongly separates object from narrator, who claims himself to be an ‘indigestible sterility’, yet this very fact enables him to be the narrator: ‘those she [Spring] has no use for see her best.’ He is cut off from life…
Yet in Church Going Larkin is clearly searching for something. He never finds what it is, and is always left ‘wondering what to look for’. His own lack of faith becomes extrapolated, and it becomes obvious that his whole nation, England, is losing its religious values (this collection was first published in 1955).
His ponderances on the fate of churches when the religion they were built to serve is gone remind of Nietzsche’s madman, who claimed that cathedrals were now only graves and sepulchres for the dead God. Here Larkin’s cynicism about the way in which our culture is headed is evident, yet paradoxically he is a product of that culture.
But even though he cannot believe in God himself, if the churches fell entirely into disuse it would represent a victory for forces he does not precisely define, yet is clearly suspicious of. And a ‘serious house on serious earth’ (as Larkin calls the church) can never be truly obsolete.
Larkin’s voice often seems sad and cynical, like the old donkey in Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Larkin wanted to be happy, but was wary because he believed happiness would prove false and fade away. So he adopted a stance of cynical realism, at times even seeming to take a kind of perverse pleasure in melancholy.
But there are times, too, when he grows weary of the masks he is forced to wear, and cannot restrain a genuine childlike sense of hope from coming forth in his work. Then we catch a glimpse of a different Larkin, as in Coming, which despite describing his childhood as a ‘forgotten boredom’, is filled with an immense sense of hope, even purity (the ‘fresh-peeled’ voice of the thrush), which seems to come directly from nature.
The birdsong makes him feel ‘like a child/ Who comes on a scene/ Of adult reconciling/ And can understand nothing/ But the unusual laughter/ And starts to be happy.’
Hope can come to us without warning, and when least expected...
Born Yesterday is a Larkin-esque reworking of Yeats’ ‘A Prayer for My Daughter’; Myxomatosis an astonishingly vivid impression of a dying rabbit; the title poem (Deceptions) is about a rape victim who is ’less deceived’ than her rapist.
Larkin is often described as ‘anti-Modernist’, but some of his poems could also be called ‘anti-Romantic’, e.g. I Remember, I Remember, where he recalls the place he grew up in, where he ‘wasn’t spoken to by an old hat’; and yet there is no bitterness against the place where his childhood was ‘unspent’, for that bitterness would itself be a form of romanticism.
Spring strongly separates object from narrator, who claims himself to be an ‘indigestible sterility’, yet this very fact enables him to be the narrator: ‘those she [Spring] has no use for see her best.’ He is cut off from life…
Yet in Church Going Larkin is clearly searching for something. He never finds what it is, and is always left ‘wondering what to look for’. His own lack of faith becomes extrapolated, and it becomes obvious that his whole nation, England, is losing its religious values (this collection was first published in 1955).
His ponderances on the fate of churches when the religion they were built to serve is gone remind of Nietzsche’s madman, who claimed that cathedrals were now only graves and sepulchres for the dead God. Here Larkin’s cynicism about the way in which our culture is headed is evident, yet paradoxically he is a product of that culture.
But even though he cannot believe in God himself, if the churches fell entirely into disuse it would represent a victory for forces he does not precisely define, yet is clearly suspicious of. And a ‘serious house on serious earth’ (as Larkin calls the church) can never be truly obsolete.
Larkin’s voice often seems sad and cynical, like the old donkey in Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Larkin wanted to be happy, but was wary because he believed happiness would prove false and fade away. So he adopted a stance of cynical realism, at times even seeming to take a kind of perverse pleasure in melancholy.
But there are times, too, when he grows weary of the masks he is forced to wear, and cannot restrain a genuine childlike sense of hope from coming forth in his work. Then we catch a glimpse of a different Larkin, as in Coming, which despite describing his childhood as a ‘forgotten boredom’, is filled with an immense sense of hope, even purity (the ‘fresh-peeled’ voice of the thrush), which seems to come directly from nature.
The birdsong makes him feel ‘like a child/ Who comes on a scene/ Of adult reconciling/ And can understand nothing/ But the unusual laughter/ And starts to be happy.’
Hope can come to us without warning, and when least expected...
January 19, 2019
Wants
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flag-staff -
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes away from death -
Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs.
Jan 17, 19
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flag-staff -
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes away from death -
Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs.
Jan 17, 19
August 31, 2014
These poems, twenty-nine in all, differ from one another in form, but not in shape. That is, all of them share the same general morphology, consisting of two main parts:
1. A realistic incident, set at a specific time and in a specific place, is described in quasi-photographic detail by a reliable narrator who, in almost every instance, can be plausibly identified with Philip Larkin himself (i.e., a balding, sweater-vested librarian, something of a sad sack, his pores oozing the sour-smelling pheromones of a perpetually rebuffed admirer of female beauty);
2. The narrator then uses the incident as a starting point from which to launch into a melancholy philosophic meditation on the nature of art, love, death, eternity, etc.
The descriptive passages are universally successful at evoking what they are intended to evoke: over and over, Larkin deftly conjures up a film-reel of vivid images, laid out in a patchwork of faintly bestial Anglo-Saxon monosyllables ("yowl," "spoor," "splay," "fleece," "wade"). When it comes to trying to understand the philosophic passages, on the other hand, I confess I am often lost. On the occasions where I do find Larkin's philosophizing to be both (1) intelligible and (2) non-obvious, the epiphanies that he flashes before my eyes are well worth holding onto: e.g., the idea that good art is a "rough-tongued bell...whose individual sound/Insists I too am individual," or the idea that a church is a place where "all our compulsions meet,/Are recognized, and robed as destinies."
My favorite poem in this collection, I think, is the seemingly slight lyric "Coming." Larkin is the kind of poet who bares his soul not directly, but indirectly, in ostensibly offhand remarks and sidelong glances. Rather than straightforwardly asserting, "Childhood, to me, is a forgotten boredom," he starts a sentence in this way: "I, whose childhood is a forgotten boredom,..." The effect is all the more piercing: we, the readers, are so blindsided that we swallow Larkin's bombshell of a confession whole. We think, "How refreshing it is to hear a post-Wordsworth poet say that childhood to him is a forgotten boredom!" And this is why the ending of the poem works as well as it does: it startles us to discover that this poet, who found his childhood to be boring and forgettable, is nevertheless able to describe childhood's emotions with such heartfelt and unadorned precision. (In fact, the poem's ending startles us in exactly the same way that springtime startles the poem's speaker; the poem enacts what it is describing.)
"...It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon--
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy."
1. A realistic incident, set at a specific time and in a specific place, is described in quasi-photographic detail by a reliable narrator who, in almost every instance, can be plausibly identified with Philip Larkin himself (i.e., a balding, sweater-vested librarian, something of a sad sack, his pores oozing the sour-smelling pheromones of a perpetually rebuffed admirer of female beauty);
2. The narrator then uses the incident as a starting point from which to launch into a melancholy philosophic meditation on the nature of art, love, death, eternity, etc.
The descriptive passages are universally successful at evoking what they are intended to evoke: over and over, Larkin deftly conjures up a film-reel of vivid images, laid out in a patchwork of faintly bestial Anglo-Saxon monosyllables ("yowl," "spoor," "splay," "fleece," "wade"). When it comes to trying to understand the philosophic passages, on the other hand, I confess I am often lost. On the occasions where I do find Larkin's philosophizing to be both (1) intelligible and (2) non-obvious, the epiphanies that he flashes before my eyes are well worth holding onto: e.g., the idea that good art is a "rough-tongued bell...whose individual sound/Insists I too am individual," or the idea that a church is a place where "all our compulsions meet,/Are recognized, and robed as destinies."
My favorite poem in this collection, I think, is the seemingly slight lyric "Coming." Larkin is the kind of poet who bares his soul not directly, but indirectly, in ostensibly offhand remarks and sidelong glances. Rather than straightforwardly asserting, "Childhood, to me, is a forgotten boredom," he starts a sentence in this way: "I, whose childhood is a forgotten boredom,..." The effect is all the more piercing: we, the readers, are so blindsided that we swallow Larkin's bombshell of a confession whole. We think, "How refreshing it is to hear a post-Wordsworth poet say that childhood to him is a forgotten boredom!" And this is why the ending of the poem works as well as it does: it startles us to discover that this poet, who found his childhood to be boring and forgettable, is nevertheless able to describe childhood's emotions with such heartfelt and unadorned precision. (In fact, the poem's ending startles us in exactly the same way that springtime startles the poem's speaker; the poem enacts what it is describing.)
"...It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon--
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy."
June 26, 2022
Lots of poems to make you say quietly “Oh no.”
October 28, 2012
Pure genius. Urban loneliness portrayed through beautiful, structured verse. This collection of Larkin's is a hidden gem. Whitsun Weddings and High Windows overshadow these poems but The Less Deceived is no shorter in stature.
Larkin is as important as Shakespeare, Dickens etc. No words are wasted in his arena.
Larkin is as important as Shakespeare, Dickens etc. No words are wasted in his arena.
September 28, 2019
There is nothing I can say
about these poems or this poet
that others have not said better
than I could. I can only say
I too, now, carry Larkin inside me
and his voice has made the toad work
more bearable and the aching beauty
not to be meant for my touch
more bearable too.
about these poems or this poet
that others have not said better
than I could. I can only say
I too, now, carry Larkin inside me
and his voice has made the toad work
more bearable and the aching beauty
not to be meant for my touch
more bearable too.
August 31, 2015
For years I've been convinced that poetry just isn't for me. I had them in uni and honestly, if someone didn't tell me what was going on, I'd probably have been lost. So, it's unusual that I pick one up. To tell the truth, the reason I decided to try Larkin was because this bundle was so small, so colour me surprised when I realised how much I loved it! Larkin's poetry really speaks to me. In the same way I've learned that Frost and Heaney do, but this one's all me.
March 30, 2019
This is the volume where I feel like Larkin's genius came into its own. Shot through with preoccupations with death, loss, and the slipperiness of his own personality, it's also full of striking imagery, queer turns of phrase, and quite a bit of dark humor. I loved this one, certainly much more so than his first published efforts in "The North Ship".
June 18, 2015
My favorite collection of poetry from any poet, I think.
August 7, 2022
The very first poem in this collection (Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album) presents some of the challenge of Larkin: his writing is beautiful, his observations insightful (“But o, photography! as no art is, / Faithful and disappointing…”), but sometimes he comes across as a bit of an ‘incel’. It’s hard to get on board with the speaker who explains he stole a photo of a woman sunbathing to keep for himself. However, hard as that is (not to mention his other troubling views), there is something brilliant about his writing.
His first collection (The North Ship) seems to me more ‘romantic’, but also more prosaic. The Less Deceived then seems to find Larkin a little more worldly, bitter, and rejected (though not always), but it’s entirely more interesting, beautiful, and sharp as a result. The Whitsun Weddings continues on this trajectory and is similarly excellent.
It seems to me Larkin was not a pleasant chap. But still, I love his poetry.
Particular favourites in this collection:
•Coming
•Reasons for Attendance
•Going
•Wants
•No Road
•Toads
•Poetry of Departures
•Triple Time
•Absences
•If, My Darling
•Skin
His first collection (The North Ship) seems to me more ‘romantic’, but also more prosaic. The Less Deceived then seems to find Larkin a little more worldly, bitter, and rejected (though not always), but it’s entirely more interesting, beautiful, and sharp as a result. The Whitsun Weddings continues on this trajectory and is similarly excellent.
It seems to me Larkin was not a pleasant chap. But still, I love his poetry.
Particular favourites in this collection:
•Coming
•Reasons for Attendance
•Going
•Wants
•No Road
•Toads
•Poetry of Departures
•Triple Time
•Absences
•If, My Darling
•Skin
Read
September 23, 2022a really sweet reread it's been shockingly long since I had a go at this last and I'm glad I did it's a collection that outlasts itself today, sadly. Look it's Larkin it's not going to age gracefully and indeed that's precisely what he's talking about from a young age. But I was really struck by how remarkable the first half (and specifically the first half. I find the welcome is worn out just before we reach Churchgoing, beloved as that poem is) can still be.
Obviously there's a sweetish love for the classic, if too classic
Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace ...
... your old name shelters our faithfulness...
but truly I do love Coming and Wants they're of my favourites of Phil's up and down, white man as ever he is. Deceived isn't him at his best and the sharpest of his tone hasn't yet arrived but it's good to anticipate it this way
Obviously there's a sweetish love for the classic, if too classic
Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace ...
... your old name shelters our faithfulness...
but truly I do love Coming and Wants they're of my favourites of Phil's up and down, white man as ever he is. Deceived isn't him at his best and the sharpest of his tone hasn't yet arrived but it's good to anticipate it this way
December 6, 2020
This is Larkin's first mature collection of poetry, following The North Ship. It is the first in a trilogy of collections that would make Larkin one of the most important poets of 20th century. Highlights ~ "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" "Reasons for Attendance" "Next, Please" "Wants" "Church Going" "Toads" "Poetry of Departures" "I Remember, I Remember" "If, My Darling" and "Arrivals, Departures".
January 12, 2016
The title of this early collection of Larkin's poems comes from 'Deceptions'--an empathetic reflection on a real-life act of sexual violence ('I would not dare / Console you if I could')--as well as being a reversal of a quote from Hamlet. The poem contains one of the most striking images in the book (with much competition): 'All the unhurried day / Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives'.
These are intricate formalist poems, concerned for the larger part with mortality and thwarted desires. The excellent 'Wires', while not being the most generally admired of the collection (that accolade belongs to its centrepiece, 'Church Going'), gives a good idea of the overall tone of defeat:
The widest prairies have electric fences,
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires
Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter.
Young steers become old cattle from that day,
Electric limits to their widest senses.
These are intricate formalist poems, concerned for the larger part with mortality and thwarted desires. The excellent 'Wires', while not being the most generally admired of the collection (that accolade belongs to its centrepiece, 'Church Going'), gives a good idea of the overall tone of defeat:
The widest prairies have electric fences,
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires
Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter.
Young steers become old cattle from that day,
Electric limits to their widest senses.
December 6, 2020
It’s really a cliche, the young poet writing about how the world has deceived him into thinking that it might be a wonderful place when it’s really a sham, designed to turn you into a drone, shunning all forms of creativity or passion. Larkin manages to tick all the boxes of terrible poetry written by boys (sorry, but it almost always is) about how reality - whoops, sorry, I meant society - manages to crush your dreams to make you just like everyone else. The poems in this collection manage to cover the whole gamut of disillusionment with your talent or career or relationships not being up to speed with your dreams but manages to be brilliant and have you nodding with astonishment at the author’s perception rather than cringing at their gauche offerings. Toads and Wires were especial standouts to me but the whole collection is just great.
January 21, 2022
Probably my favorite collection of one of my favorite modern English poets. One of its sundry gems, which can't be read without being learnt by heart:
Wants
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff --
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes from death --
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.
Wants
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff --
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes from death --
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.
May 15, 2017
But o, photography! As no art is,
Faithful and disappointing! That records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards..
Faithful and disappointing! That records
Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,
And will not censor blemishes
Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards..
July 24, 2021
church-going king
February 20, 2022
Huh? Spit it out man, stop playing word gymnastics.
July 10, 2023
i really hate this man.
February 16, 2023
Coming
On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon—
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.
'Church Going'
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Wires
The widest prairies have electric fences,
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires
Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter.
Young steers become old cattle from that day,
Electric limits to their widest senses.
On longer evenings,
Light, chill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.
It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon—
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.
'Church Going'
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
"Here endeth" much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Wires
The widest prairies have electric fences,
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires
Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter.
Young steers become old cattle from that day,
Electric limits to their widest senses.
January 3, 2021
Referencing Hamlet (Ophelia, when Hamlet says he never loved her, replies “I was the more deceived”), the poems in Larkin's first published collection are connected by the theme of deception. All of us are deceived, Larkin believes, because our actions are driven by desires that, even if secured, will not ultimately make us happy. Though it is no consolation, the sufferer is at least “less deceived” than the oppressor, because they are closer to the truthful reality of life. At least their suffering has not been hidden from them.
It is a typically sobering sentiment for Larkin and many of these poems introduce ideas he will explore further in Whitson Weddings and High Windows. Yet, in contrast to the remarkable consistency of these later collections, I find The Less Deceived a little uneven. Not every poem here demonstrates Larkin at his eloquent best and the overall tone can at times be a little too self-pitying for my taste.
That said, there are some gems. Coming, Absences, and Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album are all moving and lyrical. The sardonic Toads - perhaps Larkin's most famous poem - also features, though it isn't a favourite of mine.
The highlight though is Church Going, a poem about a non-religious man visiting an empty church. It is philosophical without being superior, melancholic without being bitter, sceptical without being bleak, cynical without being pessimistic. It reminds me of his later poems Aubade, Dockery, and Arundel's Tomb - it is direct, transfixing and profound.
---
"They might grasp my fundamentally passive attitude to poetry (and life too, I suppose) which believes that the agent is always more deceived than the patient, because action comes from desire, and we all know that desire comes from wanting something we haven't go, which may not make us any ahppier when we have it. On the other hand suffering - well, there is positively no deceptional about that. No one imagines their suffering" (Larkin)
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy
(Coming)
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence
(Church Going)
For you would hardly care
That you were less deceived, out on that bed,
Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair
To burst into fulfilment's desolate attic.
(Deceptions)
It is a typically sobering sentiment for Larkin and many of these poems introduce ideas he will explore further in Whitson Weddings and High Windows. Yet, in contrast to the remarkable consistency of these later collections, I find The Less Deceived a little uneven. Not every poem here demonstrates Larkin at his eloquent best and the overall tone can at times be a little too self-pitying for my taste.
That said, there are some gems. Coming, Absences, and Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album are all moving and lyrical. The sardonic Toads - perhaps Larkin's most famous poem - also features, though it isn't a favourite of mine.
The highlight though is Church Going, a poem about a non-religious man visiting an empty church. It is philosophical without being superior, melancholic without being bitter, sceptical without being bleak, cynical without being pessimistic. It reminds me of his later poems Aubade, Dockery, and Arundel's Tomb - it is direct, transfixing and profound.
---
"They might grasp my fundamentally passive attitude to poetry (and life too, I suppose) which believes that the agent is always more deceived than the patient, because action comes from desire, and we all know that desire comes from wanting something we haven't go, which may not make us any ahppier when we have it. On the other hand suffering - well, there is positively no deceptional about that. No one imagines their suffering" (Larkin)
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy
(Coming)
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence
(Church Going)
For you would hardly care
That you were less deceived, out on that bed,
Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair
To burst into fulfilment's desolate attic.
(Deceptions)
August 28, 2022
Very much engaged with expectations and social life, identity and interiority in an increasingly public life, and coming to terms with the course of your life. Keen observations and beautifully expressing both large ideas and commenting on daily mundanity.
A collection of quotes I wrote down:
'I was sad // That any man or beast themat night should lack // The happiness I had.' - Wedding-Wind
'All is the wind // Hunting through kids and forests' - Wedding-Wind
'No, I have never found // The place where I could say // This is my proper ground, // Here I shall stay [...] To find such seems to prove // you want no choice in where to build or whom to love' - Places, Loved Ones
'It will be spring soon - // And I, whose childhood // Is a forgotten boredom, // Fell like a child's - Coming
' We neither define nor prove' Dry-Point
'Always too eager for the future, we // Pock up bad habits of expectancy' - Next, Please
'Only one ship is seeking us, a black- // Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back // A huge and birdless silence. In her wake // No waters breed or break.' - Next, Please
'Marrying left your maiden name disused. // Its five light sounds no longer mean your face' - Maiden Name
'For since you were so thankfully confused // By law with someone else, you cannot be // Semantically the same' - Maiden Name
'We agreed to let the road between us // Fall to disuse' - No Road
'Superstition, like belief, must die' - Church Going
'A shape less recognisable each week, // A purpose more obscure. I wonder who // Will be the last, the very last, to seek // This place for what it was' - Church Going
'Someone will forever be surprising // A hunger in himself to be more serious, // And gravitating with it to this ground, // Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, // If only that so many dead lie around.' - Church Going
'By now so much had flown // From the nest here of my head that I needs must turn // To know what prints I leave, whether of feet, // Or door of pads' - Age
'All the unhurried days // Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.'
"Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?' // No, only where my childhood was unspent' - I remember, I remember
'Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms' - If, My Darling
A collection of quotes I wrote down:
'I was sad // That any man or beast themat night should lack // The happiness I had.' - Wedding-Wind
'All is the wind // Hunting through kids and forests' - Wedding-Wind
'No, I have never found // The place where I could say // This is my proper ground, // Here I shall stay [...] To find such seems to prove // you want no choice in where to build or whom to love' - Places, Loved Ones
'It will be spring soon - // And I, whose childhood // Is a forgotten boredom, // Fell like a child's - Coming
' We neither define nor prove' Dry-Point
'Always too eager for the future, we // Pock up bad habits of expectancy' - Next, Please
'Only one ship is seeking us, a black- // Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back // A huge and birdless silence. In her wake // No waters breed or break.' - Next, Please
'Marrying left your maiden name disused. // Its five light sounds no longer mean your face' - Maiden Name
'For since you were so thankfully confused // By law with someone else, you cannot be // Semantically the same' - Maiden Name
'We agreed to let the road between us // Fall to disuse' - No Road
'Superstition, like belief, must die' - Church Going
'A shape less recognisable each week, // A purpose more obscure. I wonder who // Will be the last, the very last, to seek // This place for what it was' - Church Going
'Someone will forever be surprising // A hunger in himself to be more serious, // And gravitating with it to this ground, // Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in, // If only that so many dead lie around.' - Church Going
'By now so much had flown // From the nest here of my head that I needs must turn // To know what prints I leave, whether of feet, // Or door of pads' - Age
'All the unhurried days // Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.'
"Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?' // No, only where my childhood was unspent' - I remember, I remember
'Intoned by reality, larded with technical terms' - If, My Darling
October 18, 2022
Although several are addressed to a "you", from a specified person named or un-named ("Born Yesterday", "Deceptions") to an animal ("Myxomatosis"), even to a part of the speaker's body ("Skin"), many of the poems in The Less Deceived are spoken as "I" or "we", and some include more than one of these pronouns. Sometimes the "I" is a constructed character in a dramatic monologue ("Wedding-Wind") but many feel explicitly personal: in "Reasons for Attendance", "Church Going", "Toads", and "I Remember, I Remember" we seem to hear Larkin's voice: sad, resigned, precise. The "we" poems often make apparently universal observations and claims ("We all hate home", for example, in "Poetry of Departures", or "Always too eager for the future, we / Pick up bad habits of expectancy" in "Next, Please"). It is Larkin's supreme gift to convince the reader that we [usage fully intended] are part of that "we" within each poem, that these observations or claims are true, or valid, or meaningful for "us" even though they may well not be for individual reader "I"s.
Although this collection lacks the famous standouts of The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, there are many great poems here (and only a few that I did not really enjoy), displaying Larkin's mastery of stanza forms, word choices that balance natural and poetic diction, and - especially striking in this book - wonderful use of rhymes and half-rhymes. If forced to pick highlights: "Coming" and "Going", I guess?
Although this collection lacks the famous standouts of The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows, there are many great poems here (and only a few that I did not really enjoy), displaying Larkin's mastery of stanza forms, word choices that balance natural and poetic diction, and - especially striking in this book - wonderful use of rhymes and half-rhymes. If forced to pick highlights: "Coming" and "Going", I guess?
June 23, 2019
"Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth."--David Bowie. Bowie and Larkin could have had a good go round about existentialism. Though the former favored the cut-up technique, the latter's wordsmithing cuts like a knife wielded with precision. One's results aren't better than another. I'm just saying a sentiment like the first stanza of "Next, Please", which says "Something is always approaching; every day Till then, we say," is a good counterpart to the seduction of time. Maybe not as catchy, but inescapably true.
Larkin's commentary and observations about aging and disappointment and the fears and uncertainties that keep us trapped in conformity despite our wishes for freedom, or desire to get the girl, or hopes (in vain) to evade the disappointment that successive looks in the mirror yield over time--frequently have a (gut) punch line. It's as he said himself, in the aptly named poem entitled
"Poetry of departure:"
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.
3.5
3.5
Larkin's commentary and observations about aging and disappointment and the fears and uncertainties that keep us trapped in conformity despite our wishes for freedom, or desire to get the girl, or hopes (in vain) to evade the disappointment that successive looks in the mirror yield over time--frequently have a (gut) punch line. It's as he said himself, in the aptly named poem entitled
"Poetry of departure:"
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.
And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detest my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.
3.5
3.5
April 16, 2020
"No Road:
Since we agreed to let the road between us Fall to disuse, And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us, And turned all time’s eroding agents loose, Silence, and space, and strangers – our neglect Has not had much effect. Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown; No other change. So clear it stands, so little overgrown, Walking that way tonight would not seem strange, And still would be allowed. A little longer, And time will be the stronger, Drafting a world where no such road will run From you to me; To watch that world come up like a cold sun, Rewarding others, is my liberty. Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfilment. Willing it, my ailment."
"Wants.
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone: However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the flagstaff – Beyond all this, the wish to be alone. Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death – Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs."
Since we agreed to let the road between us Fall to disuse, And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us, And turned all time’s eroding agents loose, Silence, and space, and strangers – our neglect Has not had much effect. Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown; No other change. So clear it stands, so little overgrown, Walking that way tonight would not seem strange, And still would be allowed. A little longer, And time will be the stronger, Drafting a world where no such road will run From you to me; To watch that world come up like a cold sun, Rewarding others, is my liberty. Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfilment. Willing it, my ailment."
"Wants.
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone: However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the flagstaff – Beyond all this, the wish to be alone. Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death – Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs."
January 21, 2018
Within this anthology, Larkin portrays the 'ordinary' day-to-day in a different light, and points out the things that we don't notice about the mundane-ness of human existence. In this anthology he wants to prove that he is 'less deceived' than any of us, and actually, this can become quite frustrating. Larkin is consistently a systematic pessimistic throughout this anthology, and this outlook on life can be easily spotted through his often dull and drab descriptions of...anything, really.
Larkin's poetry, however, is often humbling. Personally, it reminds me that however boring and uneventful my own life is, and however strong my own apprehensions to 'social norms' are, I'm not completely alone. Through his solitude, with no wife or children, Larkin seems to provide comfort to those going through the same, by normalising those situations and emotions - although, if course, doing so in a very 'Larkin-esque' way.
Larkin's poetry, however, is often humbling. Personally, it reminds me that however boring and uneventful my own life is, and however strong my own apprehensions to 'social norms' are, I'm not completely alone. Through his solitude, with no wife or children, Larkin seems to provide comfort to those going through the same, by normalising those situations and emotions - although, if course, doing so in a very 'Larkin-esque' way.
June 12, 2018
I preferred Larkin's last collection of poems, High Windows, to this one. But there are some great poems in this book; many of which we see regularly in anthologies.
Having read the brief and witty essays in his book All What Jazz, which has an exuberance about something (jazz) that his poems seem to lack. For all of his popularity and consideration as one of the finest poets of the second half of the 20th century, his poems do take glumness to the next level. He was not just a fine poet, but a popular one whose books sold. But his general outlook and subject matter can be taken as quite gloomy.
So, why the popularity? In reading a consideration of Larkin, the answer probably lies in the fact that he was not glib or sentimental or self-pitying. Rather, he wrote truths. Therein lies the answer: the truths contained in the poems, which spoke those truths as clear and hard as diamonds.
Having read the brief and witty essays in his book All What Jazz, which has an exuberance about something (jazz) that his poems seem to lack. For all of his popularity and consideration as one of the finest poets of the second half of the 20th century, his poems do take glumness to the next level. He was not just a fine poet, but a popular one whose books sold. But his general outlook and subject matter can be taken as quite gloomy.
So, why the popularity? In reading a consideration of Larkin, the answer probably lies in the fact that he was not glib or sentimental or self-pitying. Rather, he wrote truths. Therein lies the answer: the truths contained in the poems, which spoke those truths as clear and hard as diamonds.
October 28, 2023
Excellent, as I've come to expect from Larkin. I felt The Less Deceived gave more insight into how Larkin feels of himself than his other pamphlets, and is much improved on The North Ship (though maybe doesn't reach the heady heights of High Windows).
What makes Larkin so remarkable, is how utterly unremarkable his is. His poetry brings him across as a simply an ordinary man with an acute eye for the monotonous and grey life around him.
There is very little hidden in the way Larkin writes (unlike amny poets of the same era who tend to write in code) but he has a certain stylistic grace and flourish.
There are many highlights in this relatively short work, but for me Toads, and I Remember, I Remember are stand-out.
What makes Larkin so remarkable, is how utterly unremarkable his is. His poetry brings him across as a simply an ordinary man with an acute eye for the monotonous and grey life around him.
There is very little hidden in the way Larkin writes (unlike amny poets of the same era who tend to write in code) but he has a certain stylistic grace and flourish.
There are many highlights in this relatively short work, but for me Toads, and I Remember, I Remember are stand-out.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews