In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles’ first LP.
Burnett reminds us that the first Beatles’ LP, was Please, Please Meand that it was released on March 22, 1963. Such information enriches our understanding because Larkin’s poetry is so intimately connected with his life. (The poet actually was, according to his lover Maeve Brennan, a Beatles fan.) As a librarian, Larkin devoted his days to preserving the heritage of the past; as a poet, he hoped to preserve certain spots of time from his own life. He felt it his responsibility to re-create experiences of the “beautiful or sad or significant” in a “verbal device that will set off the same experience in other people.”
My view of Larkin is that he was a very good poet who was also a small-minded, little-Englander conservative of his own drab times.
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