Love and Death in Hull

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?”).

However, this view of family life is hardly surprising when we consider his upbringing in stifling middleclass Coventry, England, with father Sydney; affluent treasurer and sometime admirer of Hitler; and mother Eva; hopelessly and willingly helpless. Doting yet distant, Larkin’s parents were the model of tight-lipped post-World War I English suburbia and the model for everything Larkin feared about family life. His childhood (which he often dismissed as a “forgotten boredom” in interviews) was further restricted by extremely poor eyesight and a stammer; though he overcame the latter and the former proved to be a boon, of sorts, by preventing him from being fit to serve in World War II.

Like everything else in his life, Larkin found plenty to complain about when he went up to St John’s College, Oxford, to read English. But despite his grumbling he appears to have had some of the most carefree days of his life; making lifelong friendships, including one Kingsley Amis, drinking copiously and listening to his beloved jazz. He also went down with a first-class honours degree.

After graduating in 1943, fearing the government would find work for him if he could not, he successfully applied for the one-man position of librarian in a tiny provincial public library. Larkin was to spend the rest of his life as a librarian; working up to the rather more prestigious and demanding role of University Librarian at the University of Hull which he held from 1955 until his death. By all accounts he enjoyed his vocation and was extremely effective in it. More importantly, had he ever attempted to live as a professional poet he might never have produced the poem ‘Toads’:

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?

Larkin’s early collection of poetry The North Ship was published in 1945 and is heavily mired in the influence of W.B. Yeats. However, by the time his first mature work The Less Decieved was published in 1955 he had discovered the wonderful poetry of Thomas Hardy which allowed him to create the voice that would catapult him to the very heights of literary accalim with poems such as ‘Church Going’:

A serious house on a serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

His next collection was not published until 1964; The Whitsun Weddings is his greatest achievementand includes many of his most popular poems, such as ‘An Arundel Tomb’ and the title poem.

His mother Eva lived until 1977 and thus loomed over almost all of her son’s life which was perhaps another reason (or excuse) why he never felt able to commit to a woman, though this is hardly an excuse for years of juggling with the emotions of the two other most important women in his life, Maeve Brennan and Monica Jones. It is debatable as to whether it speaks to Larkin’s credit or Maeve & Monica’s detriment that they suffered his caprice and self-absorption. However, it is does appear that his mother’s death coincided with the drying-up of his poetic output: his last collection, though not his best (which is still better than most), High Windows, was published in 1974 and was thought by some critics not to meet the high standards achieved by Larkin in the two preceding collections, though it does include many memorable poems like the ominous ‘The Building’:

The porters are scruffy; what keep drawing up
At the entrance are not taxis; and in the hall
As well as creepers hangs a frightening smell.

And the brutal ‘The Old Fools’:

At death; you break up: The bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see you.

Larkin’s popularity comes partly from the fact that his poems are so accessible, not for him the symbolism of his youthful idol Yeats, but they are written about recognisable themes and events; universal themes which usually revolve around mankind’s two great preoccupations love/relationships and death. Many are stark but have a reflective melancholia to them – and amongst the beauty in misery there is much humour to be found. His poems are also precisely structured and he lamented poets for whom grammar seemed a dirty word.

Larkin spent his final years reluctantly and worrisomely accepting honorary degrees and produced very little poetry of any real quality. He succumbed to oesophageal cancer in 1985, the early death he had spent most of life fearing, but he did leave us with this last masterpiece: 'Aubade.'

Notes and asides:

- Larkin published two novels, Jill and A Girl in Winter, in the forties and always intended to be a novelist, until the novels stopped coming, believing that the novel was the higher art form - ironically his friend Kingsley Amis, a highly successful novelist, always believed that the poem was the superior form.

- Larkin was always passionate about jazz and for many years reviewed it for The Daily Telegraph – always saving special scorn for those artists, who shall remain nameless, he deemed to be indulging themselves a little too much.

- In 2008 The Times named him the greatest post-war British writer

Key Collection:

The Whitsun Weddings (1964)

Key poems:

‘Toads’
‘The Whitsun Weddings’
‘An Arundel Tomb’
‘The Explosion’
‘Aubade’

Further reading:

Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982, by Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life by Andrew Motion

Perfecting the work - W. B. Yeats

“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).)

Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1865 into a prosperous and artistic family: his father, John Butler Yeats, was a law-student-turned-artist and his brother, Jack, would became an accomplished painter. Indeed, Yeats himself studied at the School of Art, Dublin, but quickly lost interests in any artistic ambitions involving a brush. His first significant poetry publication was the collection The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) which is bogged down in peaty Irish mythology; this, and much other early work, is capable of overwhelming the Yeats neophyte. Thus, those discovering him for the first time should go straight to the best in The Collected Poems: everything post-1918 is a treat of Brobdingnagian scale and The Tower (1928) is the cream; which includes hit after hit of genius, such as:

On the soul’s journey. How it is whirled about,
Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,
Until it plunge into the sun;
And there, free and yet fast,
Being both Chance and Choice,
Forget its broken toys
And sink into its own delight at last.

from ‘All Soul’s Night’

As a symbolist Yeats’ poems are wrapped up in layer after illusory layer and are open to as much debate and interpretation as one has breath and patience for – language, especially such as is mystical in nature, is often chosen to suggest both abstract and concrete themes. Yeats is also one of the greatest masters of the traditional forms and eschewed modernism; though, he did experiment later in life.

Maud Gonne and George (Georgie) Hyde-Lees were the two great loves of Yeats’ life. He first met Gonne in 1889 and pursued her until his last proposal to her in 1916; however, they had consummated their relationship in 1908 though, sadly, Gonne encouraged a relationship of abstinence thereafter but, if nothing else, their one-night tryst yielded the poem ‘A Man Young and Old’:

Though nurtured like the sailing moon
In beauty's murderous brood,
She walked awhile and blushed awhile
And on my pathway stood

Yeats, at the age of 51, married the twenty-four year old Georgie in 1916 and gave him the children, Anne and Michael, he had long desired. The marriage was, by all accounts, a happy one and Georgie an indulgent wife: even to the extent of admitting a small army of mistresses to weep at his deathbed. Yeats died in Menton, France, on 28 January 1939. Initially his body was buried at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin but was later, as per his wishes, moved to Sligo, Ireland. His epitaph, taken from a late poem, ‘Under Ben Bulben’, reads:

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by.


Notes and asides:

- As playwright, Yeats was instrumental in creating an Irish national theatre and his nationalist play ‘Cathleen ni Houlihan’ is credited as having incited the 1916 Easter Rising

- Yeats served as a senator of the Irish Free State from 1922-1928

- Upon hearing that he had won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature Yeats’ first reaction was to ask “How much is it worth?”

Key collection:

The Tower (1928)

Key Poems:

All Soul’s Night
The Sorrow of Love
The Wild Swans at Coole
Sailing to Byzantium

Further reading:

- Foster, R. F. (1997). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. I: The Apprentice Mage. New York: Oxford UP

- Foster, R. F. (2003). W. B. Yeats: A Life, Vol. II: The Arch-Poet 1915–1939. New York: Oxford UP

(Until Foster’s two volume biography of Yeats is surpassed it remains the go-to source, but it is not insurmountable.)

I Wish I had a Sylvia Plath

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.

Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1932; after studying at Smith College and a suicide attempt she won a Fulbright scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge where she met Ted Hughes. The two bonded over a love of poetry, and wrote together for much of their early relationship, they married in 1956; the marriage was stormy and Hughes proved an imperfect husband, to say the least. Five months after Hughes and Plath separated Sylvia was found dead on February 10, 1963 from carbon monoxide poisoning (having taken care to shield her two children from the gas), aged only 30.

Despite her short life Plath wrote prodigiously, her annual output between 1956 and her death averaged 32 poems. Her work was influenced by early Dylan Thomas as well as WH Auden and Anne Sexton, and, indeed, Hughes himself. Her first collection of poems The Colossus was published in 1961; however, it was the posthumously published Ariel that brought her great critical acclaim. Mad poets don’t usually write about madness, they write about religion, chocolate, grandfather clocks and cats but Plath did – it was her metier and her poetry is full of lines that smack you around the face, such as:

The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung…

from ‘Two Views of a Cadaver Room’

Plath’s poems can have a powerful effect on the reader and even superficially gentle ones such as ‘Mushrooms’ are filled with menace and neurosis. All of Plath’s work finds the creepiness in things and this is her great strength; showing us nothing so much as the dark side of life (sometimes rather blandly termed ‘confessional poetry’), even if, at times, this can get too much or seem put on.

In conclusion, Plath needs to be rescued from her status as the patron saint of the angst ridden teenage girl; she is not the ‘greatest’ poet or the ‘best’ poet but she is an important poet and deserves to be read.

Notes and asides:

- Plath had her first published poem aged 8.
- Plath was the first poet to win the Nobel Prize for Poetry posthumously for her The Collected Poems in 1982

Key collection:

Ariel (1965)

Key poems:

Ariel
Lady Lazarus
Tulips

Further reading:
The Collected Poems (1981) edited by Ted Hughes

Birthday Letters (1998) by Ted Hughes

The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath

The Haunting of Sylvia Plath (1991) by Jacqueline Rose

**Originally written for Poets United**

WH Auden and 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.

In 1937 Auden went to volunteer for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War where his closely held left-wing views were forced to mature by the realities of war, though he would always remain staunchly on the left. More war was to come, of course, and in January 1939 Auden went to live in New York, becoming a US citizen in 1946, which was seen by British critics and readers alike as something of a betrayal and his reputation suffered for many years. Between 1956-61 Auden returned England, however sporadically, to fulfil his duties as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, something of a sign of forgiveness and a recognition of his status as a literary great, while wintering still in New York and summering in various parts of Europe (he was only required to give three lectures a year). Auden moved to Oxford permanently in 1972 and died in Vienna in 1973.

Auden was a prolific writer during his 66 years (about 400 poems; his Collected Poems is around 900 pages) though many critics feel that his work after 1939, after he had left Britain for America, never reached the heights he had previously scaled due to intentional over-intellectualism and simply failed to touch our imaginations in the same way. It is certainly possible that the tumultuous events of the first half of the 20th century sparked a perfect synergy within Auden that produced his best work but this author refuses to write-off his later work: About the House (1965) is a masterful exploration of each room of his Swiss chalet (including the lavatory) and associated memories through poetry.

His early work was heavily influenced by T. S. Eliot (who was involved in Auden’s first published works at Faber) but his influences were extremely broad including Thomas Hardy, Gilbert and Sullivan, Dante and Pope, as well as Old Norse ballads and heroic poems. A young poet searching for inspiration or guidance on subject matter or form should toss out all their ‘How to’ guides and look no further than the poems of W. H. Auden; his styles and forms run from the quatrain to haiku, couplets to verse letters. Furthermore, his subject matter not only ran the whole gamut of human emotion but delved into history, current events (of the time) and the lives of great writers. In short he is, in this author’s opinion, a poet for all seasons.

Notes and asides:

- During his lifetime Auden counted among his lovers novelist Christopher Isherwood (A Single Man) and composer & conductor Benjamin Britten (operatic adaptions of Billy Budd and The Turn of the Screw etc.).
- Auden shared a passion for the Icelandic sagas with his friend and fellow Oxford professor, J. R. R. Tolkien, whose ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy he also greatly admired; - indeed, an interest in these sagas was deemed by Auden to be an essential quality of a writer (!). Auden did not, however, share Tolkien’s devout Christian faith.
- Auden had a resurgence of popularity in the 1990s when his poem ‘Funeral Blues’ was read at the funeral in the popular film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).

Key collections:

Look, Stranger! (London, 1936; US edn., On This Island, New York, 1937)
About the House (New York, London, 1965)

Key poems:

Taller Today, we remember similar evenings (1928)
Lullaby (1937)
Musée des Beaux Arts (1938)
September 1 1939 (1939)
In Memory of W.B. Yeats (1939)

Further reading:

Collected Poems (1994) edited by Edward Mendelson

W. H. Auden – A Biography (1981; new ed. 2010) by Humphrey Carpenter

NB: The title of this piece ‘The Addictions of Sin’ is also the title of a very fine BBC documentary about Auden, which can easily be found on YouTube.

**Originally written for Poets United**