Larkin/Duffy essay plans Flashcards
Time brings disappointment as life, love, youth and hope fade away.
Mean Time:
Duffy grew up bisexual in a Catholic environment (intolerant of homosexuality) so would have been used to feeling out of place/ not belonging.
Afternoons:
Peter R. King: “…a poetry of disappointment, of the destruction of romantic illusions, of man’s defeat by time and his own inadequacies.”
Sceptical views on marriage - loveless marriage of Eva and Sydney Larkin
As an extension of time destroying romantic illusions, time is presented as more powerful than love through depictions of failed relationships.
Liz Croft on both collections: “…mournful and have themes of loss…Both are full of reminiscence and memory and consciousness of the passage of time.”
Disgrace:
follows on from The Windows, considered a companion piece.
Talking in Bed:
characteristic of The Movement (a group of anti-modernist 1950s English poets who were concerned with clarity and rationality rather than the mystical
Interactions with religious figures that demonstrate the fraudulence, corruption or profiteering nature of the Church.
Faith Healing:
Larkin was provincial in attitudes and not worldly - American accent would have sounded to him foreign, crass and ingenuine.
Atheist and nihilist.
Istvan D. Raoz: “Larkin struggled with the problem of religion as a possible means of easing the pain of human existence and offering a prospect of life after death.”
Confession:
Duffy perhaps also struggled with this idea, suggested by her abandoning Catholicism at the age of 15 and becoming, like Larkin, atheist.
Rather than eases pain, causes pain and fear.
Present religion as a set of farcical rules that religious followers blindly follow.
Water:
Atheist and nihilist
characteristic of The Movement (a group of anti-modernist 1950s English poets who were concerned with clarity and rationality rather than the mystical
Litany:
Liz Croft: “…she plays with words as she explores the way in which meaning and reality are constructed through language.”
Breaking from this narrative, or litany, is something Duffy experienced when she left the Catholic church behind at 15.
Love is presented as a force that connects people over distances of time and space.
Broadcast:
Maeve Brennan went to a concert that was broadcast live
(auditory imagery leads to visual imagination, loss of one sense heightens)
First Love:
Liz Croft: “Duffy’s outlook is generally life-enhancing, revelling in the joys of love and sex.”
Titled ‘First Love,’ so we may decide to review her first romantic relationship, 16 with 39 poet Adrian Henri. Would assume that the dynamic between a teenager and a nearly middle-aged man would be an intense first experience of love.
Explore failing relationships as love, passion and emotional connection fade away
Talking In Bed:
characteristic of The Movement (a group of anti-modernist 1950s English poets who were concerned with clarity and rationality rather than the mystical
Peter R. King: “…a poetry of disappointment, of the destruction of romantic illusions, of man’s defeat by time and his own inadequacies.”
Disgrace:
on Adultery and Disgrace, Duffy: “I was exploring the end of love, of love gone wrong. This fracturing, or wreckage, is mirrored in the language and syntax of these poems.”
Critique of the quotidian and everyday life
Toads Revisited:
Peter R. King contends that reading Thomas Hardy taught Larkin “…that a modern poet could write about the life around him in the language of the society around him…to use poetry to examine the reality of his own life.”
The Movement, clarity and frankness in their writing.
Litany:
Liz Croft: “…she plays with words as she explores the way in which meaning and reality are constructed through language.”
Breaking from this narrative, or litany, is something Duffy experienced when she left the Catholic church behind at 15.
Criticism of the carelessness and cruelty of humanity
Take One Home for the Kiddies:
Member of RSPCA and enjoyed reading Beatrix Potter stories with Monica Jones.
Stuffed:
Reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s symbolism in the film ‘Psycho’ - male desire to dominate women shown through taxidermy.
Elizabeth O’Reilly: “…insight into such disturbed minds…”
Present the idea that, regardless of how much we long to return to the past, we can only ever attempt to relive experiences through memories.
Liz Croft on both collections: “Both are, in part, mournful and have themes of loss and disappointment. Both are full of the reminiscence and consciousness of the passage of time.”
Beachcomber:
Love Song in Age:
About Larkin’s mother, inspired by a Christmas visit, where she found songbooks she used to play on the piano.
Sceptical views on love- loveless marriage of Eva and Sydney Larkin
Using the voice of a disillusioned middle aged man, explore looking back at memories and feeling disappointment with their current future.
Wild Oats:
McClatchy: “…in clipped, lucid stanzas, about the failures and remorse of age, about stunted lives and spoiled desires.”
1943 encounter with 2 girls who came into Wellington Library, Shropshire (Jane Exall - rose, and Ruth Bowman)
More attracted to Exall but starts longstanding relationship with Bowman - engaged.
The Movement - gritty, unpretentious realism and colloquial diction.
The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team:
an Economist reviewer: “spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected people… who harbour resentments and grudges against the world.”
Lonely and isolated speakers experiencing a loss of identity.
Mr Bleaney:
Andy Golding: “The Whitsun Weddings dwells on the futility of existence, of this boredom Larkin saw at the heart of everything.”
The Movement - gritty, unpretentious realism and colloquial diction.
Havisham:
Republished in her heavily feminist anthology ‘The World’s Wife’ in 1999 - gives life to previously marginalised/ silenced female figures in literature.
Embittered, betrayed character in Dickens’ novel ‘Great Expectations.’
Feminist reading.
Speakers/ personas that are disillusioned with life - weary acceptance vs. bitter and angry.
Self’s the Man:
Carried out a bachelor lifestyle, never married Monica Jones despite having a long relationship with her that lasted until his death.
Sceptical views on marriage - loveless marriage of Eva and Sydney Larkin.
Ian McClary: “He need look no further than the ordinary and everyday in order to reflect on the human condition.”
The Suicide:
Duffy grew up Catholic (suicide is a mortal sin - interesting presentation of suicide as a ritual)
An Economist Reviewer: “…spoken in the voices of the urban disaffected, people on the margin’s of society who harbour resentments and grudges against the world.”
Present life as purely a slow journey towards death, which is an ever pervading force.
Nothing To Be Said:
Liz Croft: “A sense that life is a finite prelude to oblivion underlies many of Larkin’s poems.”
James Booth: this poem was influenced by Hardy’s ‘The Dead Man Walking,’ which also treats death as a gradual process throughout life.
Never Go Back:
Like Larkin, atheist and so would see death approaching without an afterlife.
Shock of mortality and being faced with the transience/brevity of life.
Ambulances:
Larkin rejected any belief of a divine power/ afterlife (perception of death as a dark void)
In final poem ‘Aubade,’
‘…dread of dying, and being dead,’
‘…total emptiness forever…’
‘…no sight, no sound, no touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, nothing to love or link with…’ (fear of the unknown)
Mean Time:
Lewison: “Human experience is measured against the inevitability of mortality and time’s monumental capacity for indifference to human need.”
(sense of displacement, brevity of life, surprise at late stage of life?)The Catholic church is largely intolerant of homosexuality - Duffy would have been familiar with feeling out of place.
Explore the wonder and excitement of growing up, experiencing new things and exploring new aspects of life.
Drunk:
Duffy: “Poetry, above all, is a series of intense emotions- its power is not in narrative.”
First Sight:
member of RSPCA
