He looks a bit like Eric Morecambe in some of his photos – which is probably not a good comparison.
I wrote this after watching a YouTube clip of Philip Larkin riding a bicycle. I can’t exactly remember what he was doing but association with An Arundel Tomb has always made me think he was visiting churches, even though I’m not convinced that a church features in the clip. It started out as a longer piece and I pruned it and polished it every time it came back, which was often. I think it was sent out at least four times. On the last occasion I didn’t, as i recall, do anything, as i couldn’t think of anything else to do so I just sent it straight out again and, a day later, it was accepted.
This is an example of how editors all have different views and requirements.
Meanwhile, although I have used it on the blog before, I use it here to illustrate the making of moral judgements. Larkin, you see, was a racist according to his letters. That illustrates several points, such as whether we should judge poetry through a filter of our own morality. Just because he was a racist does that make him a bad poet? And if we do decided to judge a writer by his morals rather than his writing, is it fair to judge one as a racist because he preserved his correspondence, yet to make no judgement on another writer who may have failed to preserve his correspondence?
That’s a tricky thing about making moral judgements, they aren’t always accurate – a bit like the poem, which picks and choses which facts to use. I didn’t use moral judgements in selecting the facts, just what fitted nicely into the flow.
Hidden Worlds
He wears a grey gaberdine and rides a bicycle from church to church. In his head he composes poems about sex and tombs. On YouTube he flickers in black and white, like a newsreel from the 1950s. Smiles are clearly still on ration.
Larkin used more bad language than you normally expect from a librarian. This becomes understandable when you find that he started his day with half a bottle of sherry.
monochrome photo
my parents younger than me
1963
Failed Haiku Feb 2021