How can Philip Larkin's poetry be used to address the marginal or neglected?

The first couple of lines in this stanza state that the production of buildings are spreading over the great hills, but he uses personification to describe them taking over e.g. 'Brave military pylons that march o 'er scenic hills ' as if to say they were taking over them as an army would march bravely. The next few lines of the stanza propose that the country is changing into an image

Being punished as a young child, life seemed harsh and uneasy. The way parents would yell at you, tell you what to do, what not to do, and they always seemed to have gotten in the way of doing what us children wanted to do. It was all done for a reason however. The "cruelty" our parents showed us was out of love. They just want to use their experience to help guide our lives to success. With their guidance we are given opportunities to change some of the things we do for the better. Parents were raised a generation before us, therefore making them not as "chat-friendly" as someone whose our age. Mom and dad have helped in so many ways that we would not be able to name them all. From teaching us about nutrition to what words not to

BibliographyAgnes, Michael, ed. Webster's New World College Dictionary. 4th ed. Foster City: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 2001.

A sense of regulation is felt through the choice of words and the approach they are presented in. Dawe’s writing has an air of specificity, using such phrases as “there will be” and “we will” leaving no room for misinterpretation and making it clear to readers that this is the “future”. It is clearly outlined that through the evolution of cars, many small but significant things have been sacrificed including the “sounds of acceleration instead of birdsong”, “no trees/ unless as exotica” and any form of neighbourhood qualities for example “no more streets begging hopscotch squares”. Dawe is showing how in his predicted future, any sense of natural beauty is trumped by society’s overwhelming need for commercial and overly eccentric goods.

In the poem there is also an idea of man verses nature, this relates to the survival of the fittest. John Foulcher shows this through the use of first person point of view. For example in the second stanza “Then above me the sound drops” this again possesses sensory imagery creating a deeper human aura throughout the poem. Foulcher further uses a human aura to build a sense of natural imagery for example in the last stanza : “I pick up these twigs and leave them” adding closure

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kendy Menelas, Department of English, Seminole State College, Sanford, FL 32773.

Berry’s mention of the farmer and an understanding of his farm is a constant theme in this essay. Agriculture, a distribution of products born from the earth and its entrance into our bodies as nourishment, describes an interdependence. The development of highways, industry, and daily routine of work and obligation, has caused a romanticization of wilderness. High mountain tops and deep forests are sold as “scenic.” Berry reminds the reader that wilderness had once bred communities and civilization, and that by direct use of the land, we are taught to respect and surrender to it. But by invention of skyscrapers, airplanes, we are able to sit higher than these mountain tops and this is his first representation of disconnect from Creation. Mechanical invention leads one to parallel themselves with godliness, magnifying self worth and a sense of significance. What is misunderstood is that through this magnification, because there is no control or limit, we “raise higher the cloud of megadeath.” Our significance is not proved by the weight of our material wealth, rather

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

Within the second stanza, the symbolism of black smoke, dark streets, and asphalt flowers, prompts the reader to feel smothered by urbanization and industrialization. This was most evident within the juxtaposition of asphalt and flower, which shows urbanization has gone so far whereas its replaced nature

To better understand this poem some history about London during the time the poem was written is helpful. London was the “. . . undisputed cultural, economic, religious, educational, and political center” of England in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. It was a city of “warehouses, docks, factories, prisons,

The poem with enduring value. The fragmented structure and irregular rhyme scheme describes the fractured reality of metropolitan life. The opening images, personification of ‘winter evening settl[ing] down’ presents an impersonal city, as the melancholic connotation of ‘winter’ reveal the alienation and vacancy of its residents. This is reinforced through the use of enjambment ‘gusty showers/grimy craps/lonely cab-horse,’ illustrating the confused and tangled city that the persona inhabits. The ‘newspapers from vacant lots’ symbolically reflect upon the vacancy of the society to which Critic Jon Hanrahan adds Eliot’s protagnists struggle with spiritual insufficiency and a failure to make authentic connections with others’ An absence of affection and love bonds between humans is shown through the use of heavy sexual imagery and connoatations of a courtesan awating her clents as she laid upon her back and waited,’ reflecting on the ‘thosand sordid imges/of which her sol is constituted,’ the hyperbole reducing her soul into n entity of lust, sybollicallt manifesting her loneliness. As the pem concludes the revolving warth is compared to ‘ancient women’ metaphorically’ gathering fuel in cacant lots’, the paradoxical statement conveying the persuit for human warmth. Therefore my personal perception and

“In all this batch I think nothing at all good save the field of wheat, the mountain, the orchard, the olives with the blue hills and the portrait and the entrance to the Quarry, and the rest says nothing to me, because it lacks individual intention and feeling in the lines. Where these lines are close and deliberate it begins to be a picture, even if it is exaggerated…Certainly

In the next stanza, he starts to compare his life to other’s. He mentions how he heard that one man “walked out on the whole crowd”, and this leaves him feeling uncomfortable. It is not normal for someone to go against the majority, and Larkin acknowledges that. However, the author later says “Surely I can, if he did?”. Now we know that the anxious feeling Larkin had was actually restlessness, and maybe jealousy too. He wants to defy the norm, and do things his own way, yet something is holding him back. He knows that he could do it if he tried, but he fails to take action. Perhaps, just the reassuring thought of “I am capable of doing my own thing” is enough for him; just like how we

Philip Larkin (1922-1895) was an English novelist and poet, in 1955 he became a Liberian at the University of Hull. He would stay on working at the University until his death in 1895. During the first few months of his time working at the University he stayed in various bedsits, after this he moved into a flat which appears to be the same flat in which he wrote his poem “High Windows” which was first published in 1974. Clive James commented on this poem by saying: “The total impression of High Windows is of despair made beautiful.”1 The speaker of “High Windows” is most likely Larkin, although he is hiding behind a mask, not truly confirming his identity as he narrates on what he sees looking out of his window. “High Windows” was written in London during the time known as ‘The Summer of Love,’ this is when Bands such as ‘The Beatles’ brought around the craze of free thinkers, free love and drug use; no longer was the topic of sex whispered in the shadows.

(146) Larkin thus gives the impression that the reality of life as it presents itself to him falls blatantly short of what he expected. This disillusionment is particularly prominent when it comes to an assessment of what he has, or rather has not, achieved so far in life. More than once Larkin indicates the feeling that his lifetime passes unused. He talks about 'time/