Dry Point Flashcards
‘Endlessly,’
Caesura - Emphasises that the speaker feels confined by sexual desire.
Hyperbolic adverb: implies that sexual desire is a constant repetitive cycle - a desire that can never truly be stated.
Can link to Next Please - we get rid of it, it comes back.
What themes?
Implications of sexual desire
‘Till were enclosed’ ‘Start the struggle to get out’
Speaker suggests that sexual desire causes us to be trapped and restricted, we become a victim of our own insatiable needs.
‘Bestial, intent, real.’
Tricolon of adjectives - sexual desires are undignified and almost animalistic (bestial), lacking intimacy (intent)
End stop emphasising the unavoidable truth.
‘the bright blown walls collapse’
Alliterative metaphor / plosive alliteration
Represents a moment of (almost violent) release - imagery here not defined by pleasure, but more ideas of destruction and decay.
‘sad scapes’ / ‘ashen hills’ / ‘shrunken lakes’
Natural imagery of barren and lifeless landscapes represents the speakers feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction.
‘Birmingham magic’
Refers to a city famous for manufacturing wedding rings, suggesting sex devalues (‘discredits’) the purity of marriage showing marriage is to be invalidated.
AO3 - ‘Marriage is bloody hell’
‘padlocked cube of light’
Enj.
Light imagery of symbolic purity, however, the speaker feels he’ll never achieve this state of innocence as it is out of his reach, seen through the metaphor ‘padlocked’.
AO3
Theme of desire running throughout of his collection eg ‘wild oats’ - a poem about breaking up of an engagement.
Perhaps this theme is pre-emptive of swinging 60s and modernised attitudes towards sex (contraceptive pill)
Larkin famously said ‘having sex is like asking someone else to blow your nose’ - suggesting you can never feel fulfilment as others cannot fully realise your needs and so its impossible to achieve full satisfaction.
