BOOKBROODER

The Whitsun Wedding: by Philip Larkin

Larkin himself said somewhere that deprivation for him was “what daffodils were for Wordsworth”. I don’t know about the deprivation, but he turned me into a new “moneyed class in verse.”

After reading Stephan Dunn, a few days back, I was just thinking that why I can’t get a poem book by a poet who is modern and who writes in rhymes, like those classic poets. Then I rummaged in my list, which is unorganized as far as poetry books are concerned, I am still learning to make them orderly. Today I made a folder, which looks businesslike. And I have given it an archaic name, “The Poesy Folder”. Anything related to poiein, poiema, poeme or poem , whatever is that, will go into this folder now.

This book I got, the only Philip Larkin poetry book in my library. It’s small. I had added the complete collection of poems of Larkin years back, but could not read them anytime. I have no idea where that is. I am on a poetry spree nowadays. I am fully utilizing my free time. I am posting lots of reviews too. I am happy. I am not a critic, I am a reader. I blow my own trumpet in my own melody after reading books. Sometimes I rodomontade!

So I found Philip Larkin amazing. In this collection, I found 32 sublime poems. There is beauty and rhyme. I found everything: assonance, consonance, alliteration, euphony, or whatever you define in poetry. I may be incorrect in observation, but I am correct in sentiments.

“Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of safe and punctual spread of seed,
And willingness to change;
Yes it is strange,”
Philip Larkin

You will find in his poems; Mr. Bleaney’s room, electric mixers, toasters, driers, Bombay to Berkley, balconies, flower baskets, quadrilles, and so many things in and around. He binds the ordinary things in such a beauteous manner that your soul gets filled. The aroma of his metrical and sensitive craft with a good sense of humor made me feel nice. Really nice! I will recommend this book to all who have not yet witnessed the beautiful poetic art of the poet. It’s short and very good in taste.

In the end, I will share one poem which is very interesting, a contrast between the life of a married and bachelor man. The title is “Self’s the man.”

Enjoy it!

“Oh, no one can deny
That Arnold is less selfish than I.
He married a woman to stop her getting away
Now she’s there all day,
And the money he gets for wasting his life on work
She takes as her perk
To pay for the kiddies’ clobber and the drier
And the electric fire,
And when he finishes supper
Planning to have a read at the evening paper
It’s Put a screw in this wall –
He has no time at all,
With the nippers to wheel round the houses
And the hall to paint in his old trousers
And that letter to her mother
Saying Won’t you come for the summer.
To compare his life and mine
Makes me feel a swine:
Oh, no one can deny
That Arnold is less selfish than I.
But wait, not do fast:
Is there such a contrast?
He was out for his own ends
Not just pleasing his friends;
And if it was such a mistake,
He still did it for his own sake,
Playing his own game.
So he and I are the same,
Only I’m a better hand
At knowing what I can stand! ” – Philip Larkin

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, ‘Consume me’.”
— Virginia Woolf

Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Stephen Dunn

“The reverse side also has a reversed side” -A JAPANESE PROVERB

Stephen Dunn won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for this 2001 collection, Different Hours.

And this different hour, fell into my lap in a diverging hour, last year, when Sun rays were diverging from the horizon, near the sunset time, after a black patch of gloomy cloud just passed through it. With my commitment to myself that I will consume ‘an enormous amount’ of English poetry this year, which I completely failed to achieve last year, I will begin with this. Last year I had decided that I will read at least a good number of major contemporary poets in English, but I ended up with only two. Mary Oliver and Louise Gluck!

And the interesting thing is that the first poem of this collection is “before the sky darkens” and this auspice, converted my sudden selection of this book to a purposeful hand-pick when sun rays kept diverging outside my window.

“Sunsets, incipient storms, the tableau
of melancholy- maybe these are the
Saturdays- night events
To take your best girl to.”
STEPHEN DUNN

You need a certain temperament to read poetry. Because it’s succinct in structure yet the range is vast. So if you miss a critical line, the entire essence of a poem written in one page may slip out of hand. And the person, like me who is badly off with regard to contemporary English poetry, extra effort was required. I think I know sweet Fanny Adams about contemporary English poems!

When I have started reading them, I was wondering, does not anyone write in rhymes these days? I had no answer. A poem like “Androgyne” sailed me through. He talked about his lost love in that poem. There is an emotional poem on parents also.

“Our parents died at least twice,
The second time when we forgot their stories,
Or could not imagine how often they craved love,
Or felt useless or yearned some justice
in this world.”
DIFFERENT HOURS

In the poem Different hours, he writes so beautifully the normal things around him,

“A dazed rabbit sits on a dewy grass
The clamatis has no aspirations
As it climbs its trestles.
I pour myself an orange juice, Homestyle.
I say the hell with low fat cream cheese
And slather the good stuff on my bagel.”
STEPHEN DUNN

John and Mary is another poem, I liked, it’s a story about two people who never met,

“They were like gazelles who occupied different
grassy plains, running in opposite directions
from different lions. They were like postal clerks
in different zip codes, with different vacation time,
their bosses adamant and clock-driven.
How could they get together?”
DIFFERENT HOURS

Among some other poems, Chokecherry, the death of the God, Oklahoma City are also good. His poetry in this book is filled with wisdom, the routine things are sketched in flowery language, and his aesthetics are graceful and elegant. Human relations, nature, and philosophy, everything you will find in this collection. Lots of cats, and dogs too! And small stories have been written in beautiful poems. Art, spiritual woman, the sexual revolution, are some other themes through poems, he has beautifully explored. I have liked this book of poems and, slowly – slowly, I am trying to manage the contemporary stuff.