{"id":216,"date":"2014-06-16T08:50:03","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T08:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=216"},"modified":"2014-06-16T09:19:34","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T09:19:34","slug":"o-what-larks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/?p=216","title":{"rendered":"O what Larks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t done a \u201cblog\u201d for some time, partly out of family busy-ness (baby-sitting grandchildren) but mainly out of a sense of boredom with the whole business of poetry and self-promotion. Meanwhile I have been dipping into Larkin\u2019s \u201cLetters to Monica\u201d edited by Anthony Thwaite; perhaps Larkin\u2019s inimitable sense of ennui (\u201cWhat\u2019s the point?\u201d) has crept into my thinking? Not to say that the letters are not hugely enjoyable. They are. A much more roundedly compassionate and amusing man emerges from them than I had supposed \u2013 far from the right wing bigot and misogynist of legend. But he is decidedly waspish about the literary world, its feuding, constant self-advertisement, petty jealousies&#8230; Mainly of course, Larkin is unrelentingly honest about himself, ceaselessly probing for the roots of his unhappiness, his inability to form \u201cproper relationships\u201d (for instance, with Monica). And where does that intense dislike of \u201chome\u201d, family and children come from \u2013 surely from memories of his own stifled childhood? I do love Larkin\u2019s poems&#8230;but to follow his negativity, however honest, to its conclusions is probably too dangerously anti-life for most of us?\u00a0 <em>\u201cFirst boredom and then fear\u201d\u00a0<\/em> That way lies madness, n\u2019est ce pas? So I turn my thoughts out of the window to where Bridgnorth\u2019s annual rowing regatta is taking place: garbled loudspeaker announcements about the various complicated heats; brief excited commentaries as the boats, oars swinging, come flashing round the bend; polite clapping from the crowd together with rude shouted comments from \u201cmates\u201d; also sunlight, birdsong, crowds of promenaders eating chips with plastic forks out of polystyrene cartons; the drift of over-amplified Abba in between the races; a couple (drunk already?) either fighting or \u201cheavy petting\u201d in the shadows behind the boathouse; a huge Asian family, beautifully dressed, parading in descending height order past these scenes of disorder&#8230;. all that vulgar noisy real life that, sadly, Larkin would probably have despised&#8230;and longed to join in?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 I haven\u2019t done a \u201cblog\u201d for some time, partly out of family busy-ness (baby-sitting grandchildren) but mainly out of a sense of boredom with the whole business of poetry and self-promotion. Meanwhile I have been dipping into Larkin\u2019s \u201cLetters to Monica\u201d edited by Anthony Thwaite; perhaps Larkin\u2019s inimitable sense of ennui (\u201cWhat\u2019s the point?\u201d) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keithchandlerpoet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}