Stuff it, Russell. No truss here. Thought out, defendable opinions, deeply felt. Minority for sure but eat it. Tawdry? Dude, run along or express the opposite but don't dress up like daddy and dismiss the game. Almost everyone on here gushes over Larkin. He will be ok and dead.

Hi Andrew,

I'd be interested to hear more about your idea of poetry as a spell which you mention upthread in relation to Larkin You mentioned it before, commenting one of my bleaker poems.

Is it that you believe that writing about misery/miserable things is a bad idea, that it leads to one becoming more miserable and hence is to be avoided? And if so, is it just the writing of it or also the reading of it that you think is harmful? Or have I massively oversimplified?

best,

Matt

Running to work now, Matt. But just to be clear, although my idea of what poetry is and should do is related to both the comments you mention I have never discerned what pisses me off about Larkin in any of your work even if that one particular piece wasn't my favorite. It is idiosyncractic, this idea you ask about. Maybe I will PM you to talk about it if you really want to. Wouldn't interest most.

Going off on a tangent mentioned earlier, I have read some Vahni Capildeo - Venus as a Bear, specifically. My off-hand recollection now: it's pretty good.

I might go back and stress-test that recollection.

Yes, I think she is, too. It's her ability to speak in so many voices and in so many registers which I really love.

Is it time for my blort? I like the parody, Larkin not so much. Skill? Enough. Joy? Not enough. He’s less than Dryden by far. By far. Less than Frost — who for some reason, seldom lights up for me. (A few, a few.) In different words and less trenchantly, I agree with Mandelbaum here. Larkin is like sledding down a rocky hill with not enough snow. Sledding, yet could be so much better. (Like me at my clunkiest?) That parody is a hoot. Hoot! Hah.

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James: "So, you meet Eliot when things kick off and end up with Larkin by the end of the night. And you're grateful for it."


Yes, but then "It's Time" and you leave and come back the next day and the day after that and that, well into the evening of your life and suddenly you're looking around the room wondering were he went with his bowl of hyacinths and his thinning hair. Where? And you know you're too late...He's descended the stair and taken all the answers with him.

Just a riff...

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I'd be interested too, Andrew. Genuinely.

Btw Cameron, I also read some Vahni Capildeo, who I hadn't heard of, after you mentioned her. Just a couple on the PF website. Yes, interesting! I like getting new names.

My mother died in Hull about 15 years ago and I went there to sort out her personal effects.
As her house was close to Pearson Park I walked over to look for Larkin's flat and eventually found it. There was a plaque on the wall, but the house was shabby and unoccupied, the garden overgrown, and there was a rusting lawnmower there which probably dated back to Larkin's time.
Larkin was mostly ignored in Hull until it was declared England's City of Culture a few years ago, and I think that was when his statue was erected. I suppose there'll be a clamour to take it down before very long.
I spent the night in the hotel the subject of 'Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel', in homage to Larkin. The feeling of the poem was uncannily accurate.

[An irrelevant aside… Several years ago Dick Davis and I had lunch together in the Royal Station Hotel in Hull. He had grown up in Withernsea, a small town on the North Sea coast about half an hour to the east. His trip was prompted, I think, at least in part by a spirit of nostalgia. (Other than passing through Hull on countless occasions to catch the ferry to The Netherlands, I believe this was the only time I have actually set foot there.)

Clive