Philip Larkin
Subtitle: the poet's plight
By: by James Booth.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; Springer
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
Subjects: Larkin, Philip -- Criticism and interpretation.; Elegiac poetry, English -- History and criticism.; Biography in literature.; Metaphor in literature.; Death in literature.; Self in literature.
Description: "James Booth reads Philip Larkin's mature poetry in terms of his ambiguous self-image as lonely, anti-social outsider, plighted to his art, and as nine-to-five librarian, sharing the common plight of humanity. Larkin is a poet of inexpressible transcendence, but also of afternoons in the park, housing estates, ambulances, and the toad work. Whether discussing Larkin's poems of love and intimacy or uncovering his hidden metaphorical structures, Booth's focus is always on Larkin's artistry with words, the 'verbal devices' through which this purest of lyric poets celebrates 'the experience, the beauty'. Booth's close readings succeed in opening out wide theoretical perspectives on the relationship between art and biography, the nature of metaphor, and the different modes of elegy."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.