‘Never Such Innocence Again’: The Poetry of Philip Larkin

Abstract

Larkin once remarked that ‘First and foremost, writing poems should be a pleasure. So should reading them by God.’² At first sight it is hard to see how poems about ‘unhappiness, loss [and] a sense of missing out’³ can be a pleasure either to read or write but, as Larkin said on another occasion, ‘[t]he impulse for producing a poem is never negative; the most negative poem in the world is a very positive thing to have done.’⁴ Larkin enters into more detail about the writing of poetry in his essay ‘The Pleasure Principle’ where he says that it consists of three stages:

The first is when a man becomes obsessed with an emotional concept to such a degree that he is compelled to do something about it. What he does is the second stage, namely, construct a verbal device that will reproduce this emotional concept in anyone who cares to read it, anywhere, anytime. The third stage is the recurrent situation of people in different times and places setting off the device and re-creating in themselves what the poet felt when he wrote it.⁵

MCMXIV. All quotations from the poems are taken from Anthony Thwaite (ed.) Philip Larkin Collected Poems (London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1988). Page references to CP henceforth are given after the quote.