Larkins Poems

1. Choose three poems and analyze the effectiveness in them of Larkin’s imagery.

Larkin’s poems are great artifacts of language; often colloquial and which bring many images to a person’s mind when reading them. We think of these images due to his use of words, standard rhyme schemes and his interesting perception of life transmitted through his poems. This essay will study these three poems; ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, ‘High Windows’ and ‘Sunny Prestatyn’ in order to show the effectiveness in them of Larkin’s imagery.

‘The Whitsun Weddings,’ represents the change in life, which everyone goes through. This poem is about a man, possibly Larkin, going on a train heading to the countryside. Towards the middle of the poem, he sees that on every station the train stops at, there is a newlywed couple getting on for their honeymoon. At the end of the poem, he explains how marriage changes you. He uses many nouns to describe what he sees while on the train.

The first two stanzas describe in detail what he is viewing from inside the train. For example:

“Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street

Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock.”

In this line, he is thoroughly describing each object he passes by, even the smell of the fish-dock. He tends to do this very successfully because he uses clever metaphors in his writing. An example of this could be one from the line above, “of blinding windscreens.” He is referring to the sun when he says, “blinding.” This gives an effect to th...