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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.

Philip Larkin

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Philip Larkin
Age: 63 †
Born: 1922
Born: August 9
Died: 1985
Died: December 2
Critic
Journalist
Librarian
Music Critic
Music Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Philip Arthur Larkin
Think
Poems
Thinking
Separate
Individuals
Scene
Poetry
Written
Individual
Never

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Joy Is for the simple or the great to feel, Neither of which we are.
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I think that at the bottom of all art lies the impulse to preserve.
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Give me a thrill, says the reader, Give me a kick I don't care how you succeed, or What subject you pick.
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One of the sadder things, I think, Is how our birthdays slowly sink: Presents and parties disappear, The cards grow fewer year by year, Till, when one reaches sixty-five, How many care we're still alive?
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You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
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But, o, photography! as no art is,Faithful and disappointing! That recordsDull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds,And will not censor blemishes,Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards
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I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.
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One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
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Clearly money has something to do with life.
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Many famous feet have trod Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed The strength they have against the strength they need And famous lips interrogated God Concerning franchise in eternity.
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Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance.
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Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.
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I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin
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Many modern novels have a beginning, a muddle and an end.
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Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.
Philip Larkin
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I am beginning to think of the human imagination as a fruit machine on which victories are rare and separated by much vain expense, and represent a rare alignment of mental and spiritual qualities that normally are quite at odds.
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And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
Philip Larkin
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Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.
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