Phillip Larkin,Anthony Thwaite, Further Requirements: Interviews, Broadcasts, Statements & Reviews, 1952-85 Reviews

“Rooms and lonely evenings are scattered like dismal...”

Written on: 02/08/2010 by Janet Lewison (43 reviews written)

Rooms and lonely evenings are scattered like dismal confetti throughout Larkin's Collected Poems.They testify to his recurring sense of the individual's lostness even in the midst of the community, the family. Here in 'Aubade', the drunken insomniac faces the inevitability of extinction, as dawn indifferently arrives illuminating bleakly that which we all pretend to deny; we live from day to day on the cusp of nothingness.

I have always admired the devasting simplicity of Larkin's:... (read more)