Is the poem good because
it's famous? Or is the poem famous because it's good?
It's a Saturday, on a
weekend known in England as Whit, a summer's weekend and Larkin is on
a train, travelling north to south. It's a day for weddings and many
couples board the train at stops along the way. Larkin writes this
…..................................................
frail
Travelling coincidence
as an
arrow-shower landing on London.
The
artful, snobbish descriptions of the wedding parties on the station
platforms makes the reader wonder if Larkin considers this fall of
rain not as a boon on a sunlit Saturday, but as a religious
wounding shared by the wedding goers and observed from outside by
the poet.
These
happy people, a common crowd – fathers with broad belts,
mothers loud and fat, An uncle shouting
smut, girls and their
…...................................................
perms,
The
nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes
The
lemons, mauves and olive ochres
launch
an attack on London, as only provincials, such as Larkin himself, can.
While
there is beauty and artifice in the poem, there is also a whiff of
self-loathing.
Larkin
begins his journey alone
I was late getting away
and
continues in a crowd, in the three-quarters-empty train, where
…................................................
We ran
Behind the backs of
houses
Larkin's
disdain for the crowd echoes Sartre's line, hell is other people, yet
without people, himself and others, what would Larkin have written
about?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/48411
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