The Black Arts of Literary Biography Oct 30, 2009
Only a philistine would think Philip Larkin s poems diminished by his racism and love of porn ( Onan The Librarian read the best-ever headline of an article about Larkin) or Arthur Koestler s essays diminished by his being a rapist. Yet I don t mean by that to pooh-pooh the activity of literary biography. (The American Conservative)
Walt Whitman Thinks You Need New Jeans Oct 27, 2009
"Yo, Walt, I'm really happy for youI'ma let you finish, but Philip Larkin had one of the best poem-videos of all time!"). That scratchy Whitman recording also sets a mood of vague disquiet. (Slate)
Poet Paterson wins 10,000 prize Oct 8, 2009
The US-born writer beat John Donne, Benjamin Zephaniah, World War I poet Wilfred Owen and Philip Larkin to take the honour. Some 18,000 votes were cast in the poll, which is part of the BBC's Poetry Season. (BBC News -- Entertainment)
Archive photos assure our labor is not lost Jun 18, 2009
That s fitting, since work - the toad work, the poet Philip Larkin called it - is something nearly all of us have in faceless, nameless common: an identity so shared it ceases to identify. Unknown hardly means untalented. (Boston Globe)
Bowing to a higher authority May 30, 2009
And Philip Larkin, the supreme poet in English of the late 20th Century, customarily kept half a dozen women on a string at once, while avoiding marriage with the dexterity of a dodgem. After his death it all got into the papers, and it would have got into them before his death if he had ever run for the Oxford Poetry Professorship. (BBC News -- UK)
Why poetry will never leave us May 9, 2009
But it's an important job, because its very existence, no matter who holds it, is an acknowledgment by the state that there is something a state can't control, which is the national memory, and that the national memory travels in the language, like an arrow shower, as Philip Larkin said, sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain. Add your comments on this story, using the form below. (BBC News -- UK)
Keeping It All In The Family May 4, 2009
Families, the poet Philip Larkin wrote, they mess you up. Only he used slightly stronger language. (CBS News)
Von Otter gives classic love songs a fitting airing Feb 17, 2009
Mehldau took the keyboard after intermission for his own five "Love Songs," on poems by Philip Larkin, Sara Teasdale, and e.e. cummings, balancing anticipated love against its fragile attainment. In some numbers, melodies echoing popular song stretched over repeated rhythmic and harmonic cells that, despite Mehldau's motivic malleability, seemed detached from the dramatic intent. (Boston Globe)
