Wants by Philip Larken


Poem -

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:

However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards

However we follow the printed directions of sex

However the family is photographed under the flag-staff -

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.



Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs:

Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,

The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites,

The costly aversion of the eyes away from death -

Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs.

Description of poem

  1. Philip Larkin was born in England in 1922.

  2. He was one of the post-war

  3. He was commonly referred to as "England Rather poet Laureate"

  4. Larkin was favoured to be the poet laureate in 1984 but he refused it.

  5. He did not wish to come to the lime light.

  6. His collections were The Less Deceived The Whits on Weddings and High Windows.

  7. People who would not like to read poetry take delight in reading. Larkin's poetry.

  8.  Larkin employed the rhyme, stanza.

  9. The last line of, 'An Arundel Tomb' is among the most quoted in all of Larkins. "What will survive of us is love" it's popularity can seem ironic.

  10. Larkin unravels, somewhat the conviction that love, survives he also shows that it has an inevitable ring of truth-if only because we want so much to hear it.

  11. Larkin concentrated on writing fiction.

  12. His first poetry collection was - The Northship (1945)

  13. It was influenced by Yeats.

  14. He also learned from Hardy how to make the commonplace and dreary details of life to an extremely memorable poem.

  15. Wants by Philip Larkin is a two Stanza poem.

  16. It is separated by five lines or quintains

  17.  The lines do not follow a specific rhyming scheme or pattern of meter.

  18. But there is repetition, creating the illusion of rhythm for example the endings of lines one and five of each stanza are the same "alone" and "runs".

  19. Larkin also makes tile of anaphora or the repetition of a word or a phrase.

  20. In the first stanza two of the lines begin with, 'Beyond'.

  21. In the second it is, 'Beneath' 

  22. This technique helps to emphasise the demands of the long list and keeps us away from reality.

  23. It is 'oblivion' or solitude that a man is searching for.

  24. The speaker begins by saying, 'Beyond' all this he wishes to be alone. But it is hard to access

  25. There are various distractions. 

  26. These are invitation cards, sex, and family gatherings.

  27. These abstract in the path of solitude 

  28. In the next stanza, the speaker desired to forget everything.

  29. He wished to be entirely alone forgetting everything.

  30. There the poet points out how one move against there is he, "artful tension of the calendar".

  31. This is the passing of time.

  32. One might desire death or to stay all by themself.

  33. The Life ``insurance" and the 'labelled fertility rites' again are hurdles in making a man a path of solitude.

  34. Throughout human xxx to look away from death.

  35. But how can one avoid death?

  36. Death has to happen, no matter what one does.

  37. Human goes into, 'oblivion' unprepared

  38. Andrew Motion says that Larkin's poem.

  39. Have a glum accuracy of English.


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