I Wish I'd Written This

The Mower

By Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

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.

British poet Philip Larkin's work is often regarded as gloomy and cynical.  I admire the way he combines formal rhyme and metre with clear, down-to-earth language. It's the opposite of consciously 'poetic' language,  though in fact he is masterly at finding the right, fresh words. However I don't exactly love his poetry, and could not see myself writing with such pessimism.   

But that's not all there is to him. The Mower confronts the facts head-on, as Larkin always appears to do; nevertheless it displays a tenderness which must have been part of the man, no less than his famous curmudgeonly persona. It's perhaps the only poem of Larkin's I'd like to have written — though I do also enjoy his most often quoted piece, This Be the Verse, which reveals his humour (albeit in this case a rather sardonic humour):

They f**k you up, your mum and dad. 

They may not mean to, but they do.

[etc.]

Larkin was a distinguished and innovative librarian, the author of two novels, and a respected critic of both literature and music. Although he produced only four slim volumes of poetry, he was so highly regarded that he was offered the position of Poet Laureate after John Betjeman died, but declined. He tended to steer clear of literary celebrity and said that he would like his poems to sound as if he was chatting to his mates in the pub.

He did, however, give readings of his work, some of which can be heard at his Poetry Archive entry.   Also he's on YouTube.

His biography at The Poetry Foundation discusses his poetics, and he was interviewed by The Paris Review.

All his books are still available on Amazon.

I'm grateful to him for being committed to making poetry accessible. In that, he was a major influence on 20th Century poetry.

Having written all that, I discover a wonderful article about him by Jacob Knowles-Smith in an earlier Poets United series, Poet History. This was written in December 2010. If, like me, you were unaware of it, do have a look. It covers material I don't, and I highly recommend it.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).

Poet History # 12 Philip Larkin

Written by Jacob Knowles-Smith

Love and Death in Hull – Philip Larkin

Life is first boredom, then fear.

From ‘Dockery and Son’ by Philip Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985)

If ever someone could be said to have lived a writer’s life it would be Philip Larkin. One of the 20th century’s greatest poets, yet who only ever published three mature collections of poetry over a glacially slow three decades, he nevertheless warded off any encroachments upon his independence with almost pathological fervour and was terrified by the prospect of a future filled with marriage and kids (“Children are horrible, aren’t they?”).

Poet History # 9 - W.B. Yeats

Perfecting the work – W. B. Yeats

Written by Jacob Knolwes-Smith

“The intellect of the man is forced to choose perfection of the life or of the work.”

William Butler Yeats (13 June, 1865 – 28 January 1939)

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all.
          from ‘In Memory of William Butler Yeats’ by W. H. Auden

THE ABOVE quote from Auden’s elegiac poem no doubt refers to the fact that William Butler Yeat’s was influenced throughout his entire life by occult, mystical and astrological interests. In 1911 Yeats became a member of “The Ghost Club” – a paranormal investigation society – and joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890 (where he made an enemy of that infamous scamp, Aleister Crowley). He would remain in a splinter branch of the Order until 1921. Yeats was also, like many 19th century figures, influenced by the famous extoller of flimflam and humbug Emmanuel Swedenborg. Fortunately for us, however, he was also influenced by the unrivalled visionary William Blake (who renounced Swedenborg) and so, as Auden states, despite this belief in tarot, ghosts, magic/magick, angels, etc., the work survives all of this. (Both Yeats’ secretary, Ezra Pound, and his patient wife, Georgie, both deemed his occult proclivities hokum but those who wish to further explore Yeats’ ideas should consult A Vision (1925).)

Poet History - #5 Sylvia Plath

Written by Jacob Knolwes-Smith

Dying Is an art, like everything else.

I do it exceptionally well.

    

       from ‘Lady Lazarus’

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963)

Tragedy. Tragedy is a word often associated with Sylvia Plath and, certainly, when she took her life in 1963 that was a tragedy but to call her life tragic is to ignore the almost palpably vibrant work that it produced. One reason for this association is the public obsession with literary biography (which we indulge here, of course) which means that people know more about the lives of Plath, and husband Ted Hughes, than they know, or would ever care to, about her poetry. Another reason for this is that, as the above quote indicates, Plath wrote about death and horror to a great extent and so her work, influenced by depression, comes full circle in the end.

Poet History - #1 W.H. Auden

By Jacob Knowles-Smith

W. H. Auden & the Addictions of Sin

“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”

- Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973)

W. H. Auden was born in England in the city of York (not all that far from where this author sits now) in 1907 and would become one of the most influential poets and greatest writers of the 20th century. Auden grew up reading all subjects equally; science, philosophy and literature and thus spent his first year at Christ Church, Oxford studying biology until he switched to his true calling, English, in his second year. Eventually he came down from Oxford with an unspectacular third class degree (not a first showing his natural flare and lightning mind, nor a fourth showing contempt for the examinations) and spent time in Berlin, indulging an interest in the still fresh work of Freud, before returning to England to teach English.