Larkin

[amner]

The beeb are screening a dramatisation based on Philip Larkin's supposedly complex lovelife tomorrow on BBC2. I've just found the Press Pack (http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2003/04_april/22/bbc2_whole_pack.pdf) describing it (go past the gumpf about Cambridge Spies).
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[Wavid]

That link looks jolly interesting, while the programme looks like it concentrates on Larkin's excruciating love-life, it will cast a great deal of light on the poetry, I should imagine.

Is this the start of a rehabilitation of the Hermit from Hull, I wonder?

[amner]

Couldn't tell you, but it's the start of the rehabilitation of the Beeb, I'd say. Considered, thoughtful, intelligent drama ... didn't they used to do that regularly? I'll admit now that I know little enough about Larkin to be unqualified in judging it on terms of its accuracy, but as far as being stuck to the sofa watching screen rapt, then I'll happily award top marks. Smashing, I thought. And time to hunt The Less Deceived out, I'd say.
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[Wavid]

I have the Collected Poems if you would like to do a borrow.

Mind you, it's the annoying original version, where the poems are in the order in which they were written, rather than in the order in which they were published. This means that interspersed between The Less Deceived's poems (and all the other single volumes) are unpublished poems and also others that were published in magazines, newspapers etc.

This, whilst being bloody annoying, also had the effect of giving more limelight that was deserved to some of the lesser known pieces, some of which were rather unpleasant in tone, and indicative of some of Larkin's more unfortunate prejudices.

This year, however a new edition was published, with the poems grouped by volume, and then with the best of the other stuff at the back. Much better, though not so much so to warrant it's purchase when you have the original.

[Lorne Guyland]

This year, however a new edition was published, with the poems grouped by volume, and then with the best of the other stuff at the back.

I've got the original Collected poems, in the Faber's yellow version with his face on. I've seen this new version twice in bookshops. On the first occasion I looked in one, it didn't seem to contain one of my favourite Larkin poems Love Again, which was never published in an anthology. Then I picked up a copy a few months later and found it in there. Was I being blind the first time? Has anyone got a copy of collected poems without it in? I do know that the new version dropped quite a few of the unpublished poems. Perhaps the first few editions of the book didn't contain it. Perhaps I am barking up the wrong tree and a dickwit.

Bof...

Still, a shame to not put the thing up here. It is one of Larkin's more vulgar poems, and one of his most brilliant.


Love again: wanking at ten past three
(Surely he's taken her home by now?),
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.

Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt,
Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare,
And me supposed to be ignorant,
Or find it funny, or not to care,
Even ... but why put it into words?
Isolate rather this element

That spreads through other lives like a tree
And sways them on in a sort of sense
And say why it never worked for me.
Something to do with violence
A long way back, and wrong rewards,
And arrogant eternity.


Crikey. It's like a gun shot, isn't it?

[Lucoid]

Missed the Larkin drama completely - was it any good?

[Lorne Guyland]

A clever little ploy on this message board doesn't allow one to right 'b r e a s t s', does it? It replaces it with 'books'.

Try it, see what I mean. It is presumably to engineer amusing pronouncements like - 'I'd love to rag that slut, she's got great breasts.'

The above poem should have 'b r e a s t s' in place of books in the first line of the second stanza.

[Wavid]

Have fixed that now, so your last post does look a little odd now, apologies for that.

I remember that particular word censor was there to serve a specific purpose at the time, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

Oh well, and, just for the hell of it, BREASTS. Woo-hoo!

[John Self]

The yellow Faber Collected Poems with a fat Eric Morecambe on the front is now a brown one with yellow writing. The 'new' Collected Poems which was published this year - green with blue and yellow writing - is selective, in that it only has the contents of the four books in their published order, plus selected unpublished poems, the biggies like Aubade etc. I am pretty sure it does not have Love Again, or at least my copy doesn't.

I suppose the former messag censor at least made reasonably inoffensive sentiments out of statements like "How I long to get my hands on Nigella Lawson's books. I'd just love to get my head right in there among them."