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A review by slow_spines
The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin
reflective
sad
4.25
This is sad and unsentimental collection of poems. Read "Reference Back" and if its your cuppa, you'll like the rest I'm sure.
The poems are understated and often very matter-of-fact. There's a plainness to them, but that shouldn't be mistaken as being boring or bland. Yes, these are poems about people living unexciting lives - "A cut price crowd, urban yet simple". They travel for work, inhabit small spaces, watch TV, go to church, go to bed. But these are also people hemmed in, quietly struggling with their existence in a very plain - very everyday - way. These are people who have sad realisations, not tragic revelations.
Death is a major theme in a lot of these poems, directly of not. Often characters will realise some unwanted truth, and by way of this will also come to realise life has passed them by. If you're in the mood for it, you might even find some of it beautiful. There is certainly some beauty to be found in Larkin's language - everyday things are illuminated in a sometimes novel and beautiful way. There's humour too: a whimsical meditation on death here, some good old schoolboy humour there. But on the whole these poems are just...sad.
"Sad" feels like an anaemic word to use, but its the perfect one - there's a realness and simplicity to some of these poems that excites - if that's the word - a basic, unadorned sadness. I enjoyed every poem here, and I think some of its quiet imagery is going to stay in my head - the lover desperately trying to decipher static, the woman holding her song books, that mysterious final stanza on the title poem. Maybe that's because there's a side to me that particularly enjoys this sort of tone. There is that other part of me though - the winning part, I hope - that wants to give Larkin a good shake.
The poems are understated and often very matter-of-fact. There's a plainness to them, but that shouldn't be mistaken as being boring or bland. Yes, these are poems about people living unexciting lives - "A cut price crowd, urban yet simple". They travel for work, inhabit small spaces, watch TV, go to church, go to bed. But these are also people hemmed in, quietly struggling with their existence in a very plain - very everyday - way. These are people who have sad realisations, not tragic revelations.
Death is a major theme in a lot of these poems, directly of not. Often characters will realise some unwanted truth, and by way of this will also come to realise life has passed them by. If you're in the mood for it, you might even find some of it beautiful. There is certainly some beauty to be found in Larkin's language - everyday things are illuminated in a sometimes novel and beautiful way. There's humour too: a whimsical meditation on death here, some good old schoolboy humour there. But on the whole these poems are just...sad.
"Sad" feels like an anaemic word to use, but its the perfect one - there's a realness and simplicity to some of these poems that excites - if that's the word - a basic, unadorned sadness. I enjoyed every poem here, and I think some of its quiet imagery is going to stay in my head - the lover desperately trying to decipher static, the woman holding her song books, that mysterious final stanza on the title poem. Maybe that's because there's a side to me that particularly enjoys this sort of tone. There is that other part of me though - the winning part, I hope - that wants to give Larkin a good shake.