tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post5130061850230820041..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Philip Larkin: Mr BleaneyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-77971206945315615072012-10-14T08:26:16.098-07:002012-10-14T08:26:16.098-07:00It does work its way into one. And stays.
Interes...It does work its way into one. And stays.<br /><br />Interesting about the mix of vernacular strains.<br /><br />A "middle voice" for the in-betweens, concocted from adjacent extremes? <br /><br />A word that comes forward with particularized affect in the Hull lads' Yorkshire-accented performance of the lyric is "fusty".<br /><br />And the coming down hard on "Stoke", that pronounced bite. A driving-home of the nail? <br /><br />(How few poems writ these days have a lyric structure that would make them singable I wonder?)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-90005117763957187322012-10-13T12:27:30.333-07:002012-10-13T12:27:30.333-07:00"Tussocky, littered", a perfect coupling..."Tussocky, littered", a perfect coupling of words.<br /><br />"Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook/ Behind the door, no room for books or bags". <br /><br />A disenchanted poetry, a lyrical inventory<br /><br />Larkin writes as a Midlander, a person without the steady public identity of a Yorkshireman or a Cockney. We don't ever quite figure distinctly.<br /><br />His language never fixes him. He's always inbetween; nobody's boy.<br /><br />I feel as if this poem is in my bloodstream.Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-44021183947921928192012-10-12T15:49:44.152-07:002012-10-12T15:49:44.152-07:00Mostly sky
a thin line of field, trees
where the w...Mostly sky<br />a thin line of field, trees<br />where the wild plums grew<br />that they picked that summer.<br />Nothing would be better.<br />Picking anything else <br />would not be the same.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-30408804458298931552012-10-12T12:46:32.740-07:002012-10-12T12:46:32.740-07:00"sauce", "Frinton", "Stok..."sauce", "Frinton", "Stoke" mysteriously concise and plain? sounding, definite. Sparse. Set in its ways. It is dried out here. If this were the desert, I'd say Shaman, but no, not here, too private, packed away. What is opened is the possiblity that things are enough as they are.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-28909174192459837002012-10-12T10:47:33.185-07:002012-10-12T10:47:33.185-07:00Tom,
Thanks for those clouds and this poem.
"...Tom,<br /><br />Thanks for those clouds and this poem.<br />"how we live measures our own nature"<br />Larkin "Like to the lark at break of day"<br /><br />10.12<br /><br />grey whiteness of clouds above shadowed<br />plane of ridge, green of leaf on branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> seemed “absorbed in matter”<br /> itself, object pushed<br /><br /> more in the earlier picture,<br /> flat light, projected<br /><br />grey white clouds reflected in channel,<br />shadowed green pine on tip of sandspit<br />STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47198655960312673502012-10-12T10:36:17.109-07:002012-10-12T10:36:17.109-07:00He had a chance
chances
to marry
but chose the clo...He had a chance<br />chances<br />to marry<br />but chose the clouds<br />as his mate,<br />instead.<br /><br />We are left with clouds<br />as inheritance.<br />Don't be disappointed<br />in the will.<br />I see he left you some, too<br />a sizable chunk.<br />People will talk.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-58527762586534619332012-10-12T10:31:21.070-07:002012-10-12T10:31:21.070-07:00My bones will show
where I've been walking
ove...My bones will show<br />where I've been walking<br />over terrain weak new<br />rainbow black<br />varied sand<br />will join the bits of teeth<br />found with the others.<br /><br />I've never been to England<br />think in certain aspects<br />of its war torn language.<br />I'd like to look at <br />some of their timber.<br /><br />Please tell me to go home<br />I've been at school so long<br />it is Friday always. Nothing<br />lasts intact at Nonpareil.<br />To be a poet of that region<br />you'd have to be a salmon<br />or a ghost of one<br />smelling for the ghost of home<br />where host and hostess<br />wait with berries Himalayan.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89633398498751292482012-10-12T04:10:11.945-07:002012-10-12T04:10:11.945-07:00Vassilis,
I could go to school all over again wit...Vassilis,<br /><br />I could go to school all over again with this poem.<br /><br />The way the local knowledge is built into the first five stanzas, bringing reality and credibility, and setting up the remarkable folding and delaying of the syntax over the final two stanzas, with that conditional "But if... I don't know" construction, makes a little manual of the art of verse.<br /><br />For me this remains a very moving poem, getting better with the years. <br /><br />(BTW it brings back some odd personal memories as well... being stranded in the forlorn row-house streets of Stoke, while hitch-hiking, one day long ago.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-11137124980118502252012-10-12T03:33:31.441-07:002012-10-12T03:33:31.441-07:00Thanks for the poem and the enlightening backgroun...Thanks for the poem and the enlightening background information on it--if I remember correctly, this was one of the poems we discussed in UW grad writing school (the Head was an ardent admirer of Larkin's verse).<br />vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-24000344674683417002012-10-12T00:47:44.398-07:002012-10-12T00:47:44.398-07:00On 22 February 1967 Larkin wrote to Judy Egerton:
...On 22 February 1967 Larkin wrote to Judy Egerton:<br /><br />"Sometimes I think I shall never leave Hull -- I am growing defeatist: I spurn offers to fly me to Montreal or Rome, wonderful girls called Shirley & Beverley write asking what Mr Bleaney is about & I instruct Betty [Mackereth, his long-time secretary] to reply 'Mr Larkin regrets...' I am not even turning into a regional poet, with his clay pipe and acknowledged corner in the snug of the Cat and Fuddle. Just an anonymous figure, whom people will dimly remember seeing when the evening paper says 'Hull Man Dies'..."<br /><br />Though Larkin disavows the role of "regional poet", this poem is grounded specifically in the English Midlands. (Larkin grew up in Coventry). The term "the Bodies" serves a double purpose -- introducing the eerie, chill feeling of morbidity which sets the poem's tone, and locating the poem in place and time. "The Bodies" was a local colloquial term for the auto-body manufacturing plants of the Midlands, which were still thriving at the time the poem was writ (1955). The reference to Stoke (where Mr Bleaney's sister resides) confirms this geographical location. "The jabbering set he egged her [i.e. the landlady] on to buy" refers to a crystal radio set, a popular (and generally affordable) device in the austere economic circumstance of post-war Britain. Mr Bleaney's summer visits to "the Frinton folk" also identifies a class marker; Frinton is a seaside resort of modest scale, on the North Sea and not far from the Midlands. At the time of my residence in the neighborhood, Frinton was a common venue for low-overhead holidaying. And "the four-aways" refers to the weekly football betting pools -- again, a common pastime, and familiar local parlance in this part of the world.<br /><br />So in fact the poem makes a "regional poet" of Larkin after all.<br /><br />And indeed it's surprising how well this poem does in the Humberside accents of the Hull band Man-made Noise:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSAuM3fBKx0&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Mr Bleaney performed by Man-made Noise</a>.<br /><br />If we were to be having a contest feature at this blog, I would ask, what is it that is going on there on the BBC All Night North in-studio monitor, partially visible over the shoulder of Man-made Noise vocalist Terence James Dean?<br /><br />But no one would know or care.<br /><br />So a bit of historical revelation is now at hand.<br /><br />What the musicians are missing, as they sing and play, is one of the more memorable football matches of recent decades:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMsqq7pOCds" rel="nofollow">Ghana v Uruguay, World Cup Quarter Final, 2 July 2010</a>.<br /><br />(That free-kick tucked in at the top corner is the work of Diego Forlán, the dashing Uruguay striker.)<br /><br />Finally, the choice of surname for the poem's sad central figure has a bleak association by its very sound. In the early novel Jill, writ while Larkin was still an Oxford undergraduate, there is a Mr Bleaney who is identified as a grammar school classmate of the hero, John Kemp. In some real sense "Mr Bleaney", here, is an alter-ego or "double" of the poet, who seems to be signalling that certain fates are inescapable.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com