Wild Oats Analysis

About twenty years ago
Two girls came in where I worked -
A bosomy English rose
And her friend in specs I could talk to.
Faces in those days sparked
The whole shooting-match off, and I doubt
If ever one had like hers:
But it was the friend I took out,

And in seven years after that
Wrote over four hundred letters,
Gave a ten-guinea ring
I got back in the end, and met
At numerous cathedral cities
Unknown to the clergy. I believe
I met beautiful twice. She was trying
Both times (so I thought) not to laugh.

Parting, after about five
Rehearsals, was an agreement
That I was too selfish, withdrawn
And easily bored to love.
Well, useful to get that learnt,
In my wallet are still two snaps,
Of bosomy rose with fur gloves on.
Unlucky charms, perhaps.

.: Wild Oats :.

“Wild Oats” by Philip Larkin explains that a person, over the course of time, comes to realize that his greatest desires are unattainable, and second best things will have to suffice. The central purpose of this poem is to show that love is one of these great desires and despite flashes of promise it contains scarcely anything that is more than fragmentary. Through tone, diction, and irony, Larkin reveals the terrible human hopes and cold realities that which love inspires.
The Encarta Dictionary defines the word rose as “a prickly bush with ornamental flowers.” In thinking about roses one pictures its gorgeous petals and often forgets about the prickly stem on which it sits. This word is used in both, the first and third stanzas, to depict the beautiful woman who the narrator falls in love with. Her beautiful face and body allure him into affection, leading him to overlook her harsh “thorns.” Ironically rose also means “favorable, comfortable, or easy circumstances” a definition that is the complete opposite of what the unattainable lover instigates in the narrator’s life. The speaker also uses words such as “cathedral, ring, and clergy” in the second stanza, to implicitly state (does not explicitly state for he is ashamed) that he proposes to the beautiful lover, and is denied many times. In the third stanza, Larkin’s creative use of the word “snaps” in describing the pictures of his lover he carries around. Instead of simply calling them pictures or photographs, he substitutes a word that resembles what the woman in the picture did to his heart!
In the last lines of the first stanza the speaker ends with “But it was the friend I took out.” Considering he rambles on about how beautiful and great her friend it is confusing and ironic that he chooses the girl in specs. The speaker continues on in the second stanza and says “I believe I met beautiful twice.” The uncertainty of how many times he met her is not genuine and is only meant to look like he does not consider or remember how many times they met, when realistically it is all he cares about. In the third stanza the speaker states, “Well, useful to get that learnt.” This is attempt by the speaker to alleviate the cold reality of the complete loss of his desire in trying to say that he learned a valuable lesson about love. However, this is contradictory because he settled for the girl in specs as a result of knowing that the beautiful girl was unattainable from the beginning.

| Posted on 2008-06-09 | by a guest

.: Philip Larkin :.

Philip Larkin: Bracing Rather Than Depressing
Philip Larkin was born August 9, 1922 in Coventry, an industrial city in central England. He was the second son of Sydney Larkin, the city treasurer. He attended King Henry VIII School and then went on to study at St. John’s College in Oxford, where he began to appreciate and explore poetry.
Larkin grew up in an era marked by severe economic depression followed by World War II. The Encycolpedia of World Biography portrays the memories of Larkin’s youth as “sensitive and introspective, full of loneliness and passivity.” These feelings of destitution are reflected in his poems. Although it was nearly impossible for anyone to catch a break during this time period, Larkin was blessed with terrible eyesight, resulting in exemption from the military (206). While the war was still in progress Larkin graduated from St. John’s College in Oxford in 1943 (206). Soon after graduating, Larkin embodied a counteraction to the wartime poetry which he saw as “emotionally overblown and technically sloppy” (207). Larkin not only had to revolutionize the poems but the way the readers experienced the poem as well. In her article “First Boredom, Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin” Felicity Walsh explains that Larkin lived in a culture that “expected people to live private lives and have private thoughts.”
Larkin published a series of poems hoping to build a reputation for himself, but they went unnoticed. However, his streak of bad luck soon came to an end. According to the anthology Poetry Speaks, the publication of Larkin’s 1955 volume of The Less Decieved marked one of the most remarkable turnarounds in literary history and instantly established him as the leading poet of a new generation of voices, a group that would come to be known as “The Movement” (262). This group of poets mastered the technique of building strong, unique poems out of the everyday details of life, and Larkin, largely influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy, proved himself a master of this style. “In postwar Britain, Larkin’s starkly and candid lines sparked recognition among a disenchanted generation” (139).
British Writers states that “life, for Larkin and, implicitly, for all of us, is something lived mundanely, with a gradually accumulating certainty that its golden prizes are sheer illusion, that second best things will have to suffice” (275).
In his article “Philip Larkin”, W.S. Di Piero affirms “Larkin’s great subject is romanticism gone sour- in nature, household, and heart. His poems tell us that while we’re born dreamers, we must know our limits and curb unreasonable aspiration, even though we are enticed by its appeal (45). Larkin addresses the sad facts of life: the difficulty, and the loneliness that often proceeds. “Yes in facing these bleak prospects squarely, Larkin manages to be bracing rather than depressing” (139). It is interesting that his poems about how rewards and goals in life are deceptions would in turn fulfill his own ambitions.
Philip Larkin, the acclaimed British poet, received many awards that include honorary doctorates from Oxford University, the CBE, and the German Shakespeare-Preis. He was Chairman of the Booker Prize Panel, was made a member of the Companion of Literature, and served on the Literature Panel of the Arts Council. What lead to such achievement? He filled his works with appropriate, disconcerting humor, mastered the use of diction and imagery, and incorporated his own

| Posted on 2008-06-09 | by a guest