Philip Larkin Love and Marraige
Love and Marriage with Philip Larkin and Eavan Boland
Ashley Couch
Houghton College
It is strange how time changes relationships. When I first started dating the man who is now my fiancée, one of my biggest fears was of walking down the aisle on our wedding day, feeling unsure that I was making the right decision by marrying him. Now what I most often fear for our relationship is falling out of love, as so many couples do. This is something I brood on, discuss, and develop intricate strategies against. It sounds obsessive, writing it out like that, yet I doubt I am alone, or even in the minority, in this way. All engaged couples want their relationships to last. Probably this is part of the reason the poems of Philip Larkin and Eavan Boland arrest me as they do. This, and the beautiful clarity of their word choices. Both Larkin and Boland have a good deal to say on the topic of love and marriage, and to a certain extent, they both affirm my fears. They both agree that as time passes, love changes. However, while Larkin’s poems all seem to see time’s effect on love as destructive, Boland’s honest poetry still portrays hope for love as it is tested and proven true by time. Two poems by each poet, “Who Called Love Conquering” and “Talking in Bed” by Philip Larkin, and “Thanked Be Fortune” and “Marriage for the Millenium” by Eavan Boland, show that, though the two poets agree that love changes over time, they disagree about the end result of those changes. Larkin’s poem “Who Called Love Conquering” has received little attention from critics, most likely on account of its straightforward metaphor and somewhat overused theme. Roger Bowen, professor of twentieth century British poetry and fiction at the University of Arizona, writes that the poem “indulges itself in romantic melancholy, pursuing no new interpretation of experience” (97). While I will not attempt to argue for the originality of the poem, I see in it several places where Larkin uses images, meter or word
Ashley Couch
Houghton College
It is strange how time changes relationships. When I first started dating the man who is now my fiancée, one of my biggest fears was of walking down the aisle on our wedding day, feeling unsure that I was making the right decision by marrying him. Now what I most often fear for our relationship is falling out of love, as so many couples do. This is something I brood on, discuss, and develop intricate strategies against. It sounds obsessive, writing it out like that, yet I doubt I am alone, or even in the minority, in this way. All engaged couples want their relationships to last. Probably this is part of the reason the poems of Philip Larkin and Eavan Boland arrest me as they do. This, and the beautiful clarity of their word choices. Both Larkin and Boland have a good deal to say on the topic of love and marriage, and to a certain extent, they both affirm my fears. They both agree that as time passes, love changes. However, while Larkin’s poems all seem to see time’s effect on love as destructive, Boland’s honest poetry still portrays hope for love as it is tested and proven true by time. Two poems by each poet, “Who Called Love Conquering” and “Talking in Bed” by Philip Larkin, and “Thanked Be Fortune” and “Marriage for the Millenium” by Eavan Boland, show that, though the two poets agree that love changes over time, they disagree about the end result of those changes. Larkin’s poem “Who Called Love Conquering” has received little attention from critics, most likely on account of its straightforward metaphor and somewhat overused theme. Roger Bowen, professor of twentieth century British poetry and fiction at the University of Arizona, writes that the poem “indulges itself in romantic melancholy, pursuing no new interpretation of experience” (97). While I will not attempt to argue for the originality of the poem, I see in it several places where Larkin uses images, meter or word
Cited: Boland, Eavan. “A Marriage for the Millenium.” Against Love Poery. New York: Norton, 2001. 19-20. Print. --- . “Thanked Be Fortune.” Against Love Poery. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2001. 16-17. Print. Bowen, Roger. “Poet in Transition: Philip Larkin’s ‘XX Poems’.” The Iowa Review 8.1 (1977): 87-104. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. “Eavan Boland.” www.caffeinedestiny.com. Caffeine Destiny, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. “Eavan Boland.” www.poetryfoundation.org. Poetry Foundation, 2010. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. Larkin, Philip. “Talking in Bed.” Philip Larkin: Collected Poems. New York: Farrar & Co., 2003. 100. Print. --- . “‘Who Called Love Conquering’.” Philip Larkin: Collected Poems. New York: Farrar & Co., 2003. 172. Print. Mazid, Bahaa-Eddin. “ ‘This Unique Distance From Isolation’: A Stylistic Analysis of Larkin’s ‘Talking in Bed’.” www.philiplarkin.com. The Philip Larkin Society, n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2011. Oktenberg, Adrian. “Spicing it Up.” The Women’s Review of Books 20.10-11 (2003): 37. Web. 9 Dec. 2011.