Begin Afresh

Contents

Foreword x

Acknowledgements xii

Abbreviations xiv

1 Introduction 1

1 "I Remember, I Remember" 1

2 Larkin's Status as a Poet 2

3 Critical Controversies 4

4 The Evolution of Larkin's Poetry 9

5 "Begin Afresh": A Re-Evaluation 13

6 Methodology 14

Notes 15

2 Early Poems to The North Ship (1938-1945) 17

1 Juvenile Poems 17

2 Brunette Coleman Poems: Sugar and Spice 22

3 The North Ship: Poeticisms, Rhetorical Hi-Jinks, and Innovative Imitation 27

(i) A Fortuitous First Volume 27

(ii) "Poetical" Poems 29

(iii) "Yeats-y" Poems 33

(iv) Audenesque Poems 36

(v) Gendered Poems 38

(vi) Eros-Thanatos Poems 42

(vii) Carpe diem 43

(viii) Purist Aestheticism 44

(ix) Poems of Poetic Vocation 46

Notes 48

3 From Novelist to Poet 50

1 The Novels and Debats 50

2 Biographical Pressures 62

3 Crisis: In the Grip of Light and XX Poems 64

4 Britain's Political Transition 71

5 "The Movement" 73

6 Anti-Romanticism and Anti-Modernism 79

7 Religion, Consumerism, "Permissive Society" and "Race Relations" 84

Notes 87

4 The Less Deceived: "Clear-eyed Realism" and Demotic Poetics 89

1 Deceptions and Illusions 89

2 "Come and Choose Wrong": Choice 94

3 "Threadbare Perspectives": Triple Time 99

4 "Admirer and Admired": Beyond Cynicism 107

5 A Disoccurrence 110

6 My Darling 111

7 Catching Happiness 112

8 Oblivion and Self-Transcendence 113

9 Elegy 116

10 Celebration 118

11 Awkward Reverence 121

Notes 125

5 The Whitsun Weddings: Larkin at the Zenith 127

1 Serio-Comic Poems 127

2 "How Life Should Be": Advertisement Poems 135

3 Life's Victims 140

4 "Something Hidden From Us": Alter Ego Poems 144

5 "When We Start To Die": Poems of Failure and Death 150

6 "What Will Survive Of Us" 155

7 "An Enormous Yes" 162

8 The End of Larkin's Marriage Debate: 1963-1964 169

9 Epithalamium 170

Notes 176

6 High Windows: The Quotidian and the Transcendent 179

1 "Screaming for More": Public Poems 179

2 Secondary Inspirations 183

3 The "Strength and Pain / Of Being Young" 187

4 "Uncontradicting Solitude" 191

5 Self-Satire 194

6 "Your Mum and Dad" 197

7 "Very Corny" 198

8 "The Eggs Unbroken" 200

9 "You Give For Ever" 201

10 Living 202

11 The Sad Song of Money 208

12 "It Didn't Work For Them Or Me" 210

13 "O World, / Your Loves, Your Chances" 211

14 "Let It Always Be There" 218

Notes 223

7 Larkin After High Windows 227

1 "Furnace-Fear" 227

2 Betty Mackereth: The Love Poems of 1975-1976 233

3 "It Never Worked For Me" 241

4 "We Should Be Kind / While There Is Still Time" 244

5 A Lyric Moment 246

6 Friendly Doggerels 246

7 Occasional Poems 247

8 The "Last" Poem 249

9 "It Is By Bridges That We Live" 250

Notes 256

8 Conclusion 257

1 Pessimism 257

2 Lyricism 260

3 From Personal to Universal 261

4 The Ordinary 264

5 Transcendence 265

6 Larkin's Achievement 270

Notes 271

Bibliography

Index