Tag Archives: Larkin

Philip Larkin and Moral Judgement

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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

 

Would Larkin call it Quiche?

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Swings and Roundabouts, what goes around comes around, as one door closes another door opens . . .

Hot on the heels of my last rejection comes an acceptance. Not only an acceptance, but an acceptance for two tanka prose. Any double acceptance is a red letter day, as I said recently. This one was particularly good, as I had only sent two.

This is when I noticed something strange. The three that had been rejected a couple of days ago, looked poor when they were returned. The two that were accepted looked good when I re-read them. When I sent them off, they all seemed to be much the same level. It looks like I evaluate my work in relation to what happens when it is judged by an editor.

I must guard against this effect when viewing my work.

Here is a haibun that was rejected many times (four, I think) but accepted within hours by the final editor. It changed a few times over its life but the final version was not, as I recall, changed from the version that had been rejected by the previous editor.

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

Inspired by the life of Philip Larkin

(Published in Failed Haiku – February 2021)

I added the footnote because I had just been rejected by an editor for being obscure( it was a poem about a visit to Adlestrop). The editor who accepted it, did not use the footnote. You might want to read this, if you aren’t familiar with Larkin. I selected 1963 partly because of the poem and partly because of the sound. It wasn’t an easy decision because the rhyme counts against it in Japanese style poetry.

Meanwhile here are some pictures of my latest quiches, complete with ready made pastry cases. When I was a boy quiches were called flans and my mother used to make “egg and bacon pie”, which has been replaced by Quiche Lorraine. Haven’t we changed over the years? Change and improvement, that old thing.

The top picture is what happened to the leftover egg from the quiches. We just ate it for breakfast. The other pictures are quiches with a definite yellow cast to the photo and a couple of pics of the great biscuit disaster. I only had two cutters – the little man and a glass from the cupboard.

There is a lot of spinach in the flans, though you can’t really see it. We’ve also had it in curry this week. It’s going to mess my INR results up but I ordered a 500g bag with the groceries, which is a lot more spinach than it sounds when you actually have to use it. Green vegetables contain Vitamin K, which is the antidote for Warfarin so if you eat more, the INR goes down. You are supposed to eat the same things each week to stop the INR moving. So the choice is this – die of a blood clot, die of boredom, get scurvy. Discuss.

Day 31

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It didn’t seem natural to begin with, but numbering instead of titling the posts now seems normal, and saves time. However, unlike a finely crafted pun or alliteration there is little satisfaction to be gained from just writing a number. I may have to reconsider later in the year.

All my submissions are in and there is still an hour to spare. It isn’t the best way of doing things, but it certainly got me moving. Five submissions in three days, and some of them weren’t even written at this time last night. I think we can say that the pressure got me writing again. I’m just contemplating using the time difference between here and the USA to my advantage, but that might be overdoing it.

I now need to update my submissions log. I also need to write the submissions plan for the coming year. Then I need to sort out my haiku and tanka. Because they don’t have titles, and because I’ve taken my eye off the ball, I have lost control of them and don’t know what’s what. That was one of the reasons I had to write new tanka, I just can’t remember where I’ve sent some of the existing ones before, and I can’t recall every accepted one.

Time for bed now, and the admin and other problems can wait.

Here is the Larkin poem – it’s not quite as good as I remember it, but then I have deteriorated with the passing of the years. It was originally in Failed Haiku Number 62 and there are a few notes about it here and here.

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

The header picture is the sort of picture I think a poet should have -, not like the pale and washed out old codger that actually appears in my biographical notes.