	Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin was born in 1922 in Coventry, England. He attended St. John's College, Oxford. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, was published in 1945 and, though not particularly strong on its own, is notable insofar as certain passages foreshadow the unique sensibility and maturity that characterizes his later work. In 1946, Larkin discovered the poetry of Thomas Hardy and became a great admirer of his poetry, learning from Hardy how to make the commonplace and often dreary details of his life the basis for extremely tough, unsparing, and memorable poems. With his second volume of poetry, The Less Deceived (1955), Larkin became the preeminent poet of his generation, and a leading voice of what came to be called "The Movement," a group of young English writers who rejected the prevailing fashion for neo-Romantic writing in the style of Yeats and Dylan Thomas. Like Hardy, Larkin focused on intense personal emotion but strictly avoided sentimentality or self-pity. In 1964, he confirmed his reputation as a major poet with the publication of The Whitsun Weddings, and again in 1974 with High Windows: collections whose searing, often mocking, wit does not conceal the poet's dark vision and underlying obsession with universal themes of mortality, love, and human solitude. Deeply anti-social and a great lover (and published critic) of American jazz, Larkin never married and conducted an uneventful life as a librarian in the provincial city of Hull, where he died in 1985.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry Aubade (1980), Collected Poems (1989), Corgi Modern Poets in Focus 5 (1971, Femmes Damnées (1978), High Windows (1974), Poems (1954), The Less Deceived (1955), The North Ship (1945,) The Whitsun Weddings (1964), XX Poems (1951) Prose All What Jazz: A Record Diary 1961-68 (1970), Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (1984), Selected Letters 1940-1985 (1992) , Jill (1964) , A Girl in Winter (1947)

This Be The Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad. —They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had —And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn —By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern —And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. —It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, —And don't have any kids yourself.	--Philip Larkin

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

—They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

—And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

—By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

—And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

—It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

—And don't have any kids yourself.

--Philip Larkin

The Ode to Man, the first stasimon of Sophocles “Antigone” is one of the most powerful and moving passages of literature many will ever read, if it is sufficiently understood. Below is the Fagles translation. The numbers in brackets indicate line numbers and should act as a guide for this exercise. How would you enjamb these lines? Use the Watling translation (the first version you were given, p. 135, line numbers 332-375) to aid you.

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. [335] This power spans the sea, even when it surges white before the gales of the south-wind, and makes a path under swells that threaten to engulf him. Earth, too, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, [340] he wears away to his own ends, turning the soil with the offspring of horses as the plows weave to and fro year after year. [343] The light-hearted tribe of birds [345] and the clans of wild beasts and the sea-brood of the deep he snares in the meshes of his twisted nets, and he leads them captive, very skilled man. He masters by his arts [350] the beast who dwells in the wilds and roams the hills. He tames the shaggy-maned horse, putting the yoke upon its neck, and tames the tireless mountain bull. [354] Speech and thought fast as the [355] wind and the moods that give order to a city he has taught himself, and how to flee the arrows of the inhospitable frost under clear skies and the arrows of the storming rain. [360] He has resource for everything. Lacking resource in nothing he strides towards what must come. From Death alone he shall procure no escape, but from baffling diseases he has devised flights. [365] Possessing resourceful skill, a subtlety beyond expectation he moves now to evil, now to good. When he honors (weaves) the laws of the land and the justice of the gods to which he is bound by oath, [370] his city prospers. But banned from his city is he who, thanks to his rashness, couples with disgrace. Never may he share my home, [375] never think my thoughts, who does these things!

First Stasimon of Antigone	Watling	Fagles	(Optional: Brecht’s own version	Conclusions: what does the translation add or take away? How does it open up new levels of meaning or shut others down?
Word choice/diction
Syntax/grammar
Figurative language (it is likely that you will have to fully work out any metaphors by looking words up in the dictionary and perhaps doing an illustration where you map the ideas onto a sketch of the image in order to fully see how the image unfolds0
Tone
Mood
Theme
Additional differences: