Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin
Philip Arthur Larkin CH CBE FRSLwas an English poet, novelist and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945, followed by two novels, Jilland A Girl in Winter, and he came to prominence in 1955 with the publication of his second collection of poems, The Less Deceived, followed by The Whitsun Weddingsand High Windows. He contributed to The Daily Telegraph as its jazz critic from 1961 to 1971, articles gathered in All What Jazz: A...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 August 1922
eye age clear
They say eyes clear with age.
running eye solitude
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death- Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.
book food eye
I like spaghetti because you don't have to take your eyes off the book to pick about among it, it's all the same.
late nineteen rather sexual
Sexual intercourse beganin nineteen sixty-three(Which was rather late for me)between the end of the Chatterley banand the Beatles' first LP.
squat toad work
Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life?
beginning classic far formula
Far too many relied on the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle, and an end
reading giving thrill
Give me a thrill, says the reader, Give me a kick; I don't care how you succeed, or What subject you pick.
drinking giving musical
The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.
sex mean moments
Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
spiritual thinking odds
I am beginning to think of the human imagination as a fruit machine on which victories are rare and separated by much vain expense, and represent a rare alignment of mental and spiritual qualities that normally are quite at odds.
death rounds
Death: the anaesthetic from which none come round.
sanity affair poetry-is
Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.
kids men hands
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.
summer butterfly looks
And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.