Although he rejected the prevailing Neo-Romanticism of the late fortie

Although he rejected the prevailing Neo-Romanticism of the late forties and early fifties, Philip Larkin was no admirer of modernism. Like many in the English middle-class, for example, he thought Picasso a fake, and believed that an artist should ―make a horse look like a horse.

When some disparaged his work as ―limited and ―commonplace, Larkin replied, ―I‘d like to know what dragon-infested world these lads live in to make them so free with the word commonplace‘. His irritation stemmed from his view that poetry ―was an act of sanity, of seeing things as they are.‖ He thought that the connection between poetry and the reading public, forged in the 19th century by such poets as Kipling, Housman and Brooke, had by the mid-20th century been destroyed by the growing unintelligibility of English poetry to the general reader. He attributed this in part to the emergence of English literature (along with the other arts) as an academic subject, demanding poetry that required elucidation.

He saw no such need to explain his own work. When asked to expand on The Whitsun Weddings, he remarked that the intent of each poem was clear enough in itself, and he would only add that ―the poems had been written in or near Hull, Yorkshire, with a succession of 2B pencils during the years 1955 to 1963. Influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy, he made the mundane details of his life the basis for tough, unsparing, memorable poems that rejected the Victorian belief in a benevolent God, exploring life with a post-religious stoicism. The poems themselves are deceptively simple. Through the details of advertisements, train-stations, and provincial towns, they transform into something elevated and strangely beautiful the central issues of ordinary life in the language of ordinary speech. His underlying themes of love, solitude, and mortality express intense personal emotion while they strictly avoid sentimentality or self-pity, using rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction with an extraordinary variety of meters and stanzaic forms. These qualities were quickly identified, if not always appreciated, by reviewers. As the critic Donald Hall put it (only half-admiringly), ― [Larkin‘s poem] At Grass‘ is the best horse picture ever painted. Some critics went so far as to call him anti-social. In an interview, Larkin questioned why he was described a melancholy man, protesting— self-deprecatingly—that he was actually ―rather funny. Neither of these adjectives reflect the beauty of his poetry that is the source of a deep, abiding pleasure.

Philip Larkin earned a living as a librarian until his death of cancer in 1985. His first poem was published in 1940, but he earned his reputation as one of England‘s finest poets with the publication of The Less Deceived in 1955, which was subscribed to by almost all recognized young English poets: Amis, Bergonzi, Boyars, Brownjohn, Conquest, Davie, Enright, Hamburger, Hill, Jennings, MacBeth, Murphy, Thwaite, Tomlinson, and Wain. His status was confirmed with the release in 1963 of The Whitsun Weddings (the title poem of which may be the finest in all his work), and again with High Windows in 1974. The mood of each of these thin volumes changed considerably from poem to poem; but, for all their range, they were clearly the products of a singular and accomplished poetic sensibility.

1. The author quotes Larkin as saying ―I‘d like to know what dragon-infested world these lads live in to make them so free with the word commonplace in highlighted text in order to:

A. show how Larkin dismissed critics of his work by pointing out their personal failings.
B. show how Larkin mocked his critics for implying that everyday experience must be trivial.
C. suggest that Larkin‘s critics attacked his work to make their own lives seem more glamorous.
D. show that Larkin did not believe that the events he wrote about were actually common.
E. show how deeply saddened Larkin was at the criticism of his work



2. The author‘s primary concern in this passage is to:

A. show that Larkin‘s verse was informed by his views on poetry.
B. describe how Larkin created verse of lasting value based on ordinary events.
C. compare schools of poetry from the 19th and 20th centuries.
D. explain how the general reader became alienated from English poetry by the mid-20th century.
E. criticise Larking for writing fanciful and esoteric poetry



3. The author cites the description of one of Larkin‘s poems by one of his critics as ―the best horse picture ever painted.‖ This quotation serves several purposes, including to demonstrate:
I. that critics considered Larkin‘s poetry poor and funny.
II. the commonplace subject matter of Larkin‘s work.
III. that critics often blurred Larkin‘s poetry with Larkin‘s views.

A. I only
B. I and II only
C. II and III only
D. II only
E. I, II and III



4. Based on the information provided in the passage, we can assume that Larkin would be LEAST likely to write a poem taking as its subject:

A. a devout song of praise to God.
B. the working day of a London businessman.
C. the death in war of an upper-class academic.
D. a current, happy love affair.
E. a day in the life of a schoolboy