After the Death of Larkin

I read a very good article on Larkin by Rachel Cooke and a transcript of a talk by Martin Amis about the reactions to  Larkin's letters and biography.  Those two pieces, Christopher Hitchens's article "Something about the Poems" in Unacknowledged Legislation and Larkin's own poems inspired the following verses:-

 

After the death of Larkin

Part 1 - War

In the fractured world of poetry,
He‘d fixed his state of fame,
His demarcated territory,
Was mapped under his name,
A poet gains dominion
By a coup d’etat,
Officialdom’s opinion,
Legitimises that.

But then nosed the inspectors,
Reported what they’d found,
And deviance detectors,
Feared he wasn’t sound,
His attitudes distasteful,
On politics and race,
And something weird and hateful,
In that speccy face.

This dossier caused a ruction,
Among the litr’y powers,
“These writings of destruction,
Menace us and ours.”
His claim to rule disputed,
His regime unapproved,
And then the powers mooted
He ought to be removed.

Eagleton, Professor,
Clenched his fist “ J’accuse”,
And leapt to be aggressor,
Against a rightwards muse,
“His poetry’s worth zero
It should enhance, affirm,”
Said revolution’s hero
One Michaelmasic term.

In columns marched up Ackroyd
Wilson, Appleyard,
Recoiling from each factoid
Dispersed about the bard,
No hour of theirs was finer
Than when they did their bit,
To brand his poems minor
Because he was a shit.

“Now we are multi-cultured,
This Englander’s obscene,
The courses should be altered,”
Said the Prof Jardine.
“The richness of society
Behoves us all to ditch,
A voice of impropriety.”
(Now that at least was rich).


“We’ll set up a committee,
And get the lot indexed,
But as that won’t look pretty,
We’ll marginalise the text.”
Curricula were published,
The canon was reworked,
Her mission being accomplished,
Jardine discreetly smirked.

They came in occupation,
They came in shock and awe,
To punish violation,
Of a new poetic law,
That poets must be progressive,
In biography and song
The Zeitgeist sent that message,
The Zeitgeist’s never wrong


Part 2 - Uprising

So Larkin had been toppled
His reputation void,
But the poems, although hobbled,
Had not yet been destroyed.
Now, poems seem as fragile,
As dainty crystal birds,
But these were tough and agile,
Muscle packed with words,

They started sloganeering,
On balconies you‘d see,
Banners high appearing,
“Man hands on misery,”
And then graffiti spraying
Flyovers up above,
Painted letters saying:-
“What survives is love.”

On every dive and joint went
Tags of how hope fails.
Scrawls of disappointment,
Splashes of dark sails,
That tow a final silence,
Then, sick of peaceful stuff
The poems turned to violence
My god, did they get rough.

They ambushed with their sadness,
They roadblocked with their pain,
They sniped with wedding gladness
That somewhere turns to rain,
They sabotaged the searchers,
Who trace some reverence,
In graveyards around churches,
Crumbling out of sense.

They laid mines with the penal,
Chairs of urine pools,
Where sit the sentenced senile,
In death-rows of old fools.
They bombed with that insidious,
Job that squats on you,
The heavy and amphibious
Beast that sees you through.

They rampaged through each college,
They alone, themselves,
Bandoliered with knowledge
Occupied the shelves,
Exploding their existence,
And if a poem can live,
It’s the best resistance,
A poem can ever give.

These terroristic tactics
Were naturally deplored,
But extremism in practice
Cannot be just ignored,
So secret negotiations.
A restating of their goals,
And in general consultations,
YouGov conducted polls.

The public duly voted,
The pollsters then advised,
That the poems were often quoted,
And bought and memorised.
In threads of bloggish banter,
The poems received a plus,
“The baldy old book-stamper
Knew what’s it’s like, being us.”

So Hull cried “He‘s our Larkin“,
And set a Larkin trail
The sites he’d made his mark in,
Became the Holy Grail,
The library he’d established
To shops which sold him porn,
And Coventry was jealous
'Cause that’s where he’d been born.

Part 3 Aftermath

And you’d expect that soon will
Those critics who were trounced
Will come to a tribunal,
Where they will be denounced.
But this is foggy Britain,
We leave things blurred and vague,
For crimes that you have written,
No hearings at The Hague.

They collect, the opportunists,
Promotions and high pay,
They rise, hot-air balloonists,
On thermals of their day,
An academic theorist,
Who bows towards his times,
A courtier-careerist,
Inevitably climbs.

And there are other factors
Of realpolitik
And so former detractors,
Department, group, and clique,
Contented, tin-eared criminals,
Unmindful of their past,
Fatten like housed animals,
They‘ll fatten to the last.

Envoi - the Death of Larkin

It wasn’t edifying,
Life’s bad, what’s next is worse,
Terrified of dying,
Larkin clutched the nurse.
A whingeing alcoholic,
Childless and unwed.
His poems jive and frolic,
Around his narrow bed.

 

Comments

[Sarah AB]

Jolly good - I don't feel I know Larkin as well as I should, but I do like him and have also enjoyed teaching his poems - particularly Sunny Prestatyn. Going back to your recent RCP piece - there are some points of contact between your post and this argument I think.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4105

[Learn to Fly]

Great post! I am a fan of Rachel Cooke too..