"Mr. Bleaney" by Philip Larkin (poetry reading)

[hammersabc]

Thank you - beautifully read. I hadn't cried at this poem for some years.

[sherlockhaimes]

This brings back recollections of my first encounter with this poem at university twenty years ago. The voice is very sumptuous and evocative in delivery. Listening to it here, Larkin's sympathy with his protagonist's ghost is tender in its terseness.

[transonicbuoy1]

I read this in 1988. I was in a rented room then. I am in a rented room now. True story. Who needs mortgages and nuclear kids, when you can rent rooms, wash your face, and walk in fields?

[dbrownsberger]

Where is this reading from?

[SpokenVerse]

I'm not sure I know what you mean. It's a complete poem, not a part of something else.

It was written by Philip Larkin in 1955, published in The Listener and then included in a collection of poems called The Whitsun Weddings printed in 1964

[dbrownsberger]

I'm sorry for being unclear. Larkin recorded this poem six times. I was wondering which recording this came from?

[SpokenVerse]

Oh, I see. This is my voice, not Larkin's. I read all the poems in this channel.

[dbrownsberger]

Ah, lovely. Thank you.

[andrewshere]

Sorry for the following long comment, but I really like this one...

The observations are acute: the 'saucer-souvenir' as ashtray, 'his preference for sauce to gravy...', how Bleaney 'kept on plugging at the four aways...'

[SpokenVerse]

Larkin has no basis for his contempt. Mr. Bleaney formed a mutually respectful, even affectionate relationship with his landlady; he had aspirations and family ties whereas Larkin is socially crippled and spiritually isolated.

[andrewshere]

Yes, spot on

[andrewshere]

Bleaney's social class is revealed with a measured and restrained contempt. And finally, Larkin attempts to distance himself from the irony of now inhabiting the same circumstance through the speculation in the final stanza.

Ironic in itself, then, that it is Larkin's very own self-awareness and capacity for introspection that becomes most damaging..

[andrewshere]

..... Self-loathing is revealed, because Larkin does indeed recognize that how he is living measures his nature, whereas for Bleaney ignorance was bliss.

And yet, does that capacity for introspection finally redeem him? To us, who stand 'outside' the poem, we can see him as noble poet. To Larkin, within, I suspect he recognized no such redemption.

Thanks for another great reading.

[mcmcwa]

great stuff !