Larkin's Poetic Style

Larkin's poetic style combines an ordinary, colloquial style, clarity, a quiet, reflective tone, ironic understatement, and a direct engagement with commonplace experiences.

Andrew Motion defines Larkin's poetry as a 'life-enhancing struggle between opposites', balancing 'symbolist moments' and 'freely imaginative narratives' with 'remorseless factuality' and 'crudity of language'.

Andrew Motion concludes that Larkin's poetry is typically 'ambivalent' and testifies to wide sympathies, contains passages of transcendent beauty, and demonstrates a poetic inclusiveness of immense consequence for his literary heirs.

<p>Larkin's early work showed the influence of Eliot, Auden, and Yeats.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The poet suggests breaking the inevitability by breaking the bad habit of living for the next wonderful thing in our lives and living in the present.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>Larkin's style is bound up with recurring themes and subjects, including death and fatalism.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The theme of the poem is the inevitability of death and the habit of living for the future, which leads to disappointment.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The text proposes the poem serves as a warning not to live life pining for the future, but to live each moment as it comes.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The text suggests that living each moment as it comes can lead to a well-lived life, which will leave us psychologically prepared for the inevitable time of death.</p> Signup and view all the answers

<p>The text suggests the poem teaches us not to live our lives pining for the future, but to live in the present, as a well-lived life will prepare us for the inevitable time of death.</p> Signup and view all the answers