tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post3316665212881133344..comments2023-11-05T09:33:34.696+00:00Comments on The 'Spill: Blimpyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03062521891682719767noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-68622535103650867572008-07-29T20:18:00.000+01:002008-07-29T20:18:00.000+01:00Here's my fave Larkin, i find the phrase "summer's...Here's my fave Larkin, i find the phrase "summer's pace" just an amazing combination of two words:<BR/><BR/>Cut Grass<BR/> <BR/>Cut grass lies frail:<BR/>Brief is the breath<BR/>Mown stalks exhale.<BR/>Long, long the death<BR/><BR/>It dies in the white hours<BR/>Of young-leafed June<BR/>With chestnut flowers,<BR/>With hedges snowlike strewn,<BR/><BR/>White lilac bowed,<BR/>Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,<BR/>And that high-builded cloud<BR/>Moving at summer's pace.Blimpyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03062521891682719767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-15505959834716556782008-07-26T10:15:00.000+01:002008-07-26T10:15:00.000+01:00Right that's it. I need the complete works of Lark...Right that's it. I need the complete works of Larkin. Am off to Ebay him. Wonder what he would make of that, eh? Not poetry but while I was poorly in bed this week I re-read the complete works of my favourite writer - Saki. Anyone know him/like him?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-628986240312314032008-07-26T07:27:00.000+01:002008-07-26T07:27:00.000+01:00Still on topic, here is TS Eliot from 'The Waste L...Still on topic, here is TS Eliot from 'The Waste Land'<BR/><BR/>Unreal city, <BR/>Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,<BR/>A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,<BR/>I had not thought death had undone so many.<BR/>Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,<BR/>And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.<BR/>Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,<BR/>To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours<BR/>With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.<BR/><BR/>I think of this most mornings as I fight my way across the Aire on the way to work.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-60670043336707438742008-07-25T23:12:00.000+01:002008-07-25T23:12:00.000+01:00There's so much lyrical beauty in Larkin, if you'r...There's so much lyrical beauty in Larkin, if you're unaware of him, it's very much worth having a peruse. This is one his most famous, and mosr beautiful:<BR/><BR/>An Arundel Tomb<BR/> <BR/> Side by side, their faces blurred,<BR/>The earl and countess lie in stone,<BR/>Their proper habits vaguely shown<BR/>As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,<BR/>And that faint hint of the absurd -<BR/>The little dogs under their feet.<BR/><BR/>Such plainness of the pre-baroque<BR/>Hardly involves the eye, until<BR/>It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still<BR/>Clasped empty in the other; and<BR/>One sees, with a sharp tender shock,<BR/>His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.<BR/><BR/>They would not think to lie so long.<BR/>Such faithfulness in effigy<BR/>Was just a detail friends would see:<BR/>A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace<BR/>Thrown off in helping to prolong<BR/>The Latin names around the base.<BR/><BR/>They would no guess how early in<BR/>Their supine stationary voyage<BR/>The air would change to soundless damage,<BR/>Turn the old tenantry away;<BR/>How soon succeeding eyes begin<BR/>To look, not read. Rigidly they<BR/><BR/>Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths<BR/>Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light<BR/>Each summer thronged the grass. A bright<BR/>Litter of birdcalls strewed the same<BR/>Bone-littered ground. And up the paths<BR/>The endless altered people came,<BR/><BR/>Washing at their identity.<BR/>Now, helpless in the hollow of<BR/>An unarmorial age, a trough<BR/>Of smoke in slow suspended skeins<BR/>Above their scrap of history,<BR/>Only an attitude remains:<BR/><BR/>Time has transfigures them into<BR/>Untruth. The stone fidelity<BR/>They hardly meant has come to be<BR/>Their final blazon, and to prove<BR/>Our almost-instinct almost true:<BR/>What will survive of us is love. <BR/><BR/>That last line is a real killer, the wait you have for love, and then the syllabic lightness and simulataneous weight of it, like a pebble dropped into water...sigh..<BR/>Even better (note: other opinions are available) is The Whitsun Weddings, which I read back in 6th form and it just stayed with me. When I lived in London, I could never approach it after a time away without remembering the last two stanzas. Read it here.<BR/>http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-whitsun-weddings/TracyKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00286764670162439668noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-85408847764259599822008-07-25T22:12:00.000+01:002008-07-25T22:12:00.000+01:00Ashamed to say that about all I know about Larkin ...Ashamed to say that about all I know about Larkin is the line in "There She Goes My Beautiful World". Loved your selections & am now inspired to go get a poetry book for more.Shoegazerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09828201930225840725noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-85342885083876086202008-07-25T20:45:00.000+01:002008-07-25T20:45:00.000+01:00Double boo to Larkin for dissing the toad and frog...Double boo to Larkin for dissing the toad and frog population. But that's just lip service. I LOVED LOVED LOVED those two poems. Very powerful and weighty. Thanks for posting them.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-50353767815371750362008-07-25T18:05:00.000+01:002008-07-25T18:05:00.000+01:00A toad-lover writes: Boo! Unfair to toads!A toad-lover writes: Boo! Unfair to toads!treefrogdemonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08668655760960757921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1533372025110910037.post-29281469248538887452008-07-25T17:43:00.000+01:002008-07-25T17:43:00.000+01:00Love love LOVE Larkin, such a miserable old git an...Love love LOVE Larkin, such a miserable old git and apparently very fond of porn, which makes a refreshing change from the stereotypical view of poets, all suicide and joylessness.TracyKhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00286764670162439668noreply@blogger.com