What does /lit/ think about Philip Larkin?

Studied The Whitsun Weddings in high school. Didn't like all of it but some of them were really good and I still think about them sometimes.

>Why did he think adding meant increase? To me it was dilution

Why do people think he's racist?

I think I remember studying 'Toads' and 'Toads Revisited' in Sixth Form. They were okay. Very political though, which I didn't like so much.

>>8151229

Largely due to the post-humous publishing of his Selected Letters in 1992. It basically shot his reputation to shit when it came out. It basically showed him as a racist, mysogynist who was obsessed with pornography.

He'd probably have felt right at home on 4chan.

>>8151377
He was a precusor to the r9k robot, for sure.

I just remember him for a poem about being jealous of people who can fuck with condoms bs when he was a teen they weren't widely available.

>>8151155
Your parents fuck you up they really do !!

>>8151229
because he was

it doesn't show in his poetry though

>>8151155
The first poet I really liked. Took a poetry class because of him. I've been studying poetry ever since. This was and still is one of my favourite poems of his:

First Sight

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

His novels are quite plain and he has boring prose to an extent. The plots are fun enough. His oeuvre seems to be the solace one can take in creative works (making and consuming). The protagonist of Jill is so dissatisfied with his social failures that he creates a 15 year old ideal of virtue and lives through her. She quite literally comes to life from his writing and he is enamoured with her--totally spellbound with this narrative. Since he created Jill, in a sense his misery and frustrations are his own doing.

Larkin's poetry is nice and plain. Reminds me a little of Robert Frost in what they sought to achieve: structured poetry with at least one reading for "the people".

It's very clear Larkin was a hateful, bitter old bastard. Writing was his escape; his attempt to carve his own happy narrative in a sea of hideous ideas that mentally warped his mindset.

Based as a lad, above average as a poet. Aubade is fucking great, though, and there's this poem of his called No Road that gave me serious feels after a break-up.

>>8152517
That's Annus Mirabilis, I think.

He fell in love with the city of Hull. For those of you not from the UK, that's a clear sign of madness.