Begin Afresh: The Evolution of Philip Larkin's Poetry

by Sisir Kumar Chatterjee

Overview

Begin Afresh: The Evolution of Philip Larkin’s Poetry offers incisive, insightful and yet lucid analyses of all the individual poems contained in the four major collections of Larkin (1922–1985).

It also deals with his “Juvenile Poems”, Brunette Coleman poems, those in In the Grip of Light and XX Poems, as well as his last poems. The book also discusses Larkin’s novels and débats. It evaluates the critical opinions regarding various aspects of Larkin’s poetry, especially the issue of its development, and shows that it may not follow a clearly identifiable, linear, chronological line of evolution, but it does evolve in a subtle way from one phase of his career to the next. The book explores how Larkin discovered his own original, inimitable, idiosyncratic poetic voice by truly democratising English poetry for the first time, by writing accessible and pleasurable poetry, and by forging a new poetic out of a philistine aesthetic, which stands out as an artistic holotype. It shows how Larkin restores the relation between poetry and the reading public, a relation which was broken down by Modernist poets. It also establishes how his poetic vision is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but realistic in that it “preserves” the universal human condition without moralising or philosophising. The book aims to make a fresh departure in Larkin criticism and mark a new era in Larkin studies.

This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of Modernism, twentieth-century literature, poetry, language and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040311523
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/12/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	314
File size:	821 KB

About the Author

Sisir Kumar Chatterjee is Associate Professor at Hooghly Mohsin College, Burdwan University, West Bengal, India. His first monograph on Philip Larkin was published in 2006 and he has published extensively on fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He co-edited The World of Agha Shahid Ali (2021) and is currently co-editing Arundhati Roy: Political, Ethical and Aesthetic Perspectives and a book on Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge. His novel Burning Burning was published in 2022.

Table of Contents

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 Débats 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

Editorial Reviews

"Sisir Kumar Chatterjee revisits Larkin’s oeuvre in light of a host of recent developments: editorial, critical and personal. The idea to ‘begin afresh’ may be only ‘almost true’, but the close re-readings yield a new harvest of fascinating details and intriguing insights."

Raphaël Ingelbien, Associate Professor of English Literature, KU Leuven and author of Misreading England: Poetry and Nationhood since the Second World War (Rodopi 2002).

"Larkin’s own passions and ambitions have never been so intelligently explained. Begin Afresh offers an insightful exploration into the development of Larkin’s oeuvre, viewing the novels and poetry as a whole. The author’s deep appreciation of Larkin’s work gives us a renewed vision of and affection for it."

Janice Rossen, author of Philip Larkin: His Life’s Work (Harvester Wheatsheaf 1989)

From the Publisher