Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Philip Larkin

I much prefer the dark, moody wit of Larkin. In fact, I prefer the dark, moody wit of most anyone, granted they do it right. I believe this side of his personality saves him from being too religious and transcendent for me. Poets seem to think that they must all be looking up for a greater meaning to life and the things around them. Sometimes there is no greater meaning, sometimes things just are.

I love the way that Larkin is able to balance this duality in his work, because along with the aforementioned comments, I do think that some loftier ideas hold merit in a poetical setting, and at times are required, but they should not take over the piece. Great art is created through one's self, by connecting the self to the larger framework of the human condition (which includes matters of the mind, body, and soul) and interpreting that connection and experience in a beautiful way for others to experience as well.

Larkin succeeds in this endeavor. And by saying I prefer the dark, moody wit is not saying I hate the other, but rather, I feel as though this plight is more important and necessary. Without it, he would seem unreachable, airy, and unrelatable. With it, he seems human, but the other is still necessary. Otherwise, what would he have to contrast when he says "Death is no different whined at than withstood." from Aubade, if he didn't first introduce the terrifying fact of death. He first contemplates what death means, going through the religious and scientific aspects, the unknowing foreverness of it, and then dismisses all of this by essentially saying, "Well, it's going to happen anyways, to everyone, so might as well go one with my day." "Work has to be done." he says near the end of the poem.

This presentation of contemplating bigger than yourself concepts, only to push them away for matters of the here and now. The first was death vs. my life now, but Larkin also concerns himself with other issues such as love vs. how marriages really are, represented in his poem "Talking in Bed" (one of my favorites). The romantic side of him thinks that "talking in bed ought to be easiest", but the realistic side of him knows that this is not so. The transcendentalist side of him symbolically likens the turbulent state of their marriage to "the wind's incomplete unrest", but then he dismisses this notion with a simple "None of this cares for us." The last few lines represent his voice best, his "if it's this then it can't be the other" (even though he manages to simultaneously invoke feeling for both sides), by stating "It becomes still more difficult to find/ Words at once true and kind,/ Or not untrue and not unkind."

Brilliant.

O'Hara's "Fantasy"

I have to say that, besides Ginsberg, O'Hara has been one of my favorite poets we have read thus far this semester. That's why I found it fitting that the poem I liked most from O'Hara was dedicated to the health of Allen Ginsberg- "Fantasy."

The thing I love about this poem is the nonsensical tone of it. The title implies a fantasy, which usually means the wish of something fantastical, but this is more idle, irrelevant musings. "The main thing is to tell a story." he says in a line near the middle of the poem. Is it? What story then is O'Hara telling us now?

I believe he is telling us several. He jumps from one line to the next, seemingly with no apparant transition or reasoning. But read it again. As much as it is stream of consciousness, it is almost possible to wade through the stream, to see just along the bend and discover where you are heading, while still being able to look behind you and admire how long you've come.

O'Hara ends his collection, "Lunch Poems", with this poem, which is fitting if you follow the analogy I just laid out for you. He is essentially describing the whole process with which he creates his art. Musings, leading to real world observations (Musical thoughts interrupted by a window slamming on his hand), leading to wonderful interjected lines of no merit, yet they stand alone as quotable gems that strengthen to poem as a whole ("What dreams, what incredible/ fantasies of snow farts will this all lead to?"), leading to a dismissal of the poem as a whole ("I/ don't know, I have stopped thinking like a sled dog."), leading to his point- the whole point of his art- the story, leading to an explanation (finally! one may think) of why he waits so long to get to the point ("Imagine/ throwing away the avalanche/ so early in the movie."). There would be no suspense, no point in reading further, if you knew right away that so-and-so died and this is a tribute to them. He might as well write eulogies for the paper.

No, this is about O'Hara's connection to the world, and if that is able to turn into a universal emotional reaction, so be it. But O'Hara concerns his art with his life, and the lives of those around him, and how those lives affect his. He is an observational poet, but it is these observations, and the way that he presents them, that are so wonderful. These are what make him an artist, "Just free, that's all..."

Larry Rivers "Double Portrait of Berdie" (1955)


When searching through the selected artists, I was struck by Larry Rivers' style. It is at once realistic and impressionistic, emotional and cold, observational and intimate. I chose this painting in particular, which embodies all of those things and more, for how it could influence someone of the New York school of poets and their specific style and mindset.

The woman is depicted in two places at the same time. She is here and there, yet still contained in the single scene of the bedroom. This implies the passage of time, however not a great passage has occurred. The lighting in the bedroom has remained the same, and she is still unclothed. This reminds me of the works of O'Hara, his "take a walk with me, experience this small moment with me" type of writing. Here, we are experiencing this brief moment in the life of Berdie, within her room, within her time. She is inviting the viewer in (by the eye contact on the left), and is, in the same moment, contemplative (by looking out of presumably a window on the right). This encompasses the NY school of thought that poetry can capture a personal moment, share that moment with someone else through art, and in turn become a universal experience of life.

Everything is art. That floral bedspread is just as much a piece of art as Berdie. Art is everything. There should be no distinguishing between one thing being more important, or artistic, than anything else. In that sense, Larry Rivers has treated everything in the room equally. It is all subject to both bouts of extreme realism, and smudged impressions of what was, or ought to be. It is fleeting, and you have to capture what you can when you can, and hope that what you were able to is enough to convey your message. This painting's message seems to be a mirror image of the raw beauty and realistic, kinetic observation of the human condition that was seen in the poetry of this time.