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It is fatal to decide, intellectually, what good poetry is because you are then in honour bound to try to write it, instead of the poems that only you can write.

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
Decide
Poetry
Instead
Intellectually
Write
Fatal
Writing
Poems
Trying
Honour
Good
Bound
Bounds

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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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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
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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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Spring, of all seasons most gratuitous, Is fold of untaught flower, is race of water, Is earth's most multiple, excited daughter And those she has least use for see her best, Their paths grown craven and circuitous, Their visions mountain-clear, their needs immodest.
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Sex means nothing--just the moment of ecstasy, that flares and dies in minutes.
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Novels seem to me to be richer, broader, deeper, more enjoyable than poems.
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Walk with the dead For fear of death.
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true!
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My age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud.
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SEX is designed for people who like overcoming obstacles.
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
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He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
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Things are tougher than we are, just As earth will always respond However we mess it about.
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This is the first thing I have understood: Time is the echo of an axe within a wood.
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Sexual intercourse began in 1963 ... / Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ and the Beatles first LP
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
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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.
Philip Larkin