If you daydream about love poetry chances are Philip Larkin is probably not the poet who comes to mind. The bespectacled, balding, miserly Englishman who worked in libraries and lived in attics was no Lord Byron. In the second of our two-part series on the poetry of love, we shift from Shakespeare’s sonnets to the more sombre stanzas of Philip Larkin. The poet was known for his caustic wit, an appetite for pornography, and for having more than one girlfriend at a time. Not exactly a formula for notable words of romance. It was in fact his inability to embrace love that caused him to write some of the most tender lines of the modern age.
Philip Larkin and a different kind of love poetry.
Guests:
Michael Gearin Tosh, fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford Univeristy, and author of “Living Proof: A Medical Mutiny.”