34 Comments

Thank you! I love the happenstance of your mother having worked at the Haslar hospital. And glad to be discovering Oliver's work together! I agree that much of what I've read of hers is very beautiful. This poem seemed untypical in a way, but just as lovely as others.

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A compelling exploration, Jeffrey. Really enjoy your readings and points of comparison. I agree about the focus on the words “neutral” and “stand” as most impactful and even astonishing. Standing at once creates this strength to continue on and an isolated separation from the loved one. I was unfamiliar with both poems; thanks for sharing them with us!

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Thank you, Kate! I'm glad - and honoured - that my readings worked for you. It was fun to do this and it left me seeing Oiver's work in a new light (and Larkin's, in a way).

By the way, you might be intersted in this article - I found the opening paragraph quite thought pprovoking: https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/on-the-threshold?pc=1589

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Wow, I’ve only read that first paragraph so far but looks great! Thanks ☺️

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Thank you Jeffrey. You have reignited my love for poetry which had dulled for me in recent years. I have never liked Philip Larkin’s poetry, finding him too pessimistic and I had never heard of Mary Oliver before you introduced her a few weeks ago. I think her poetry is beautiful and evocative. I prefer to read things that uplift me rather than bring my soul down. Thank you also for sharing that lovely painting of Haslar Naval Hospital, as my mother worked there as a nurse in the WRENS many years ago so that was an unexpected but nice memory.

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I have to agree on Larkin. I have always found him not only pessimistic, but overdone. I find Mary Oliver’s poem quite surprising in little moments.

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No poem is an island, entire of itself. No art of any kind, really. You have linked these poems in a way that expands them both, and both are new discoveries to me. By the way, I somehow jumped to the conclusion that you were at the hospital with your two children, Oliver and Larkin. A fine pair of names, I thought.

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Thank you, Rona! I hadn't thought of the two names in that way, but yes, they'd be good ones!

I agree that no poem is an island. I was interested, for example, to see those echoes from Eliot in Oliver's poem.

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I am surprised to read how many people are newcomers to Mary Oliver. Here in New England she seems to be second only to Robert Frost! I had not read this poem, however, which balances nature with humanity more than usual. I appreciated, too, your notice of Larkin's sociological side, and what seems to be greater compassion in this case of Eliot versus Oliver--that was a surprise! Many thanks.

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Thank you for reading and commenting, Marsha! I'm very glad to hear that you found this essay interesting. I'm interested to hear that you don't see this as a typical Oliver poem. That was my feeling too, though it's only based on the evidence of reading two of her collections. I really appreciate your comments.

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I really enjoyed this 'dual reading', Jeffrey. You have introduced me to Mary Oliver, whose work is new to me, but I love sneaky old Larkin with his semblance of 'ordinariness' which then reveals that acute sense of reality he has. I loved that line 'Some old, but most at that vague age that claims/ The end of choice.' Oh so true.

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This is so interesting, Jeffrey. I have only recently become acquainted with Mary Oliver’s work too, so this article was really informative for me. I love the way you compare the two poems.

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Thank you so much, Maureen! Good to be exploring Oliver's poetry with you!

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Hi Jeffrey, how lovely to read your poem comparison two days before National Poetry Month kicks off. How did you know to find these two different but similar poems? I enjoyed reading both and your take. Thank you!

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Thank you, Maureen! It's great that you have Poetry Month. In the UK, there's just National Poetry Day, I think. I'm not sure about here in Japan.

The poem by Oliver, which I really enjoyed on first reading it, somehow found a little pathway in my mind that led to the Larkin. I'm glad it did.

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Marvelous--and then this poem by Larkin whose poetry always amazes (note the irony in the prosody:

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

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I've always loved the line about misery that "deepens like a coastal shelf." Thanks for the reminder, Mary!

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I feel the impersonal institutionalism and the unsettling sense of general quiet dread and inevitability in the atmosphere in Larkin's poem. I figure this is Larkin going into the hospital for his own issues and his response to it, there is no mention of anyone being a visitor but everyone a potential patient. Oliver, on the other hand, is a visitor seeing a loved one who has been caught up in and suffered through the storm of war where the situation mentions the suffering of the civil war soldiers wounded in more primitive times, then the images of the vacant room where some other soldier has just died and the room made ready for the next. There is a quiet sense of perhaps gratitude that her loved one, though a visitor in this place of tragedy and loss, will likely have a better outcome. The angle of attack: Larkin pessimistic and Oliver sensitive and empathetic. But also two very different circumstances. Larkin talking as the direct experience of everyman - as all of us. Oliver as the everyman observing and sympathizing with others. Both poets quietly reflecting on suffering from different angles. It would be interesting to see some anthologies that explore a very specific theme like this, like a hospital, as a motif and all of the different angles the different poets and periods would illuminate.

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Cecil, thank you for your detailed and compelling analysis! Yes, Larkin sees us all as potential patients. And you are surely right to stress Oliver's empathy in this poem.

I think there are many layers in the poems and I certainly didn't attempt to capture them all. For example, in the Larkin poem, there is the background story of the NHS, barely 25 years old then, which was the emblem of the social democratic settlement in the UK after World War II. Larkin was not a great fan of social democracy, and I sense an air of disapproval lingering in the poem. One might even go so far as to say that the "frightening smell" that hangs in the hall might be a deft or unconscious reference to that.

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What would be your guess as to what "frightening smell" Larkin was impressed by? Chemical smells would you guess? I can imagine those kind of antiseptic smells being frightening back in the day. Or something more, let us say, biological?

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Perhaps a mixture of both? I think it's also possible he was also suggesting the smell of death and decay more generally.

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Frankly when I think of the smell of death and decay in today's world, I think of butcher shops who have let something get a little too ripe so to speak. I don't buy any meat those days. Gross!

Any such smells of rot at a hospital would definitely be deeply disturbing.

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Great post Jeffrey! Two of my favourite poets. I met Philip Larkin once or twice. I worked next door to Hull University in the 1980s and I often used to lunch there in Staff House. One day Larkin was walking out of the canteen and I was with a colleague and his three year old daughter. She toddled ahead of us and Larkin opened the door for her. She gave him a beatific smile and he smiled back - as you would to a child. My friend dug me in the ribs and said " When she grows up I'll be able to tell her Philip Larkin smiled at her!" The best account of him and his funny ways is in Jonathan Raban's book 'Coasting'. The hospital was of course Hull Royal Infirmary which is a huge 1970s slab sided tower block and is also the building referred to in 'High Windows'.

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Thank you for this lovely anecdote, Liz! It is somehow heartwarming for me to think of Larkin smiling in this kindly way at a child. Thank you too for the extra detail on the hospital.

This is without doubt one of the best things about writing on Substack - the richness of comments from our wonderful readers - don't you think?

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Certainly do!

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Nicely done, Jeffrey. As with some others here, both poems are new to me. I have to say in this instance, though I feel closer to Larkin in general, I think Oliver produced the more effective and better poem, more concise and powerful. For all Larkin's periphrasis, beginning with the title, he ends being quite on the nose anyway, in what I find an atypically longwinded poem for what it conveys. And while I can see why you or anyone else might read Oliver's final line as offering or suggesting "resilience" or "suffering made bearable through love," I read it, to choose a word, as more "neutral," more complexly balanced in depicting a fulness of experience than Larkin's characteristically dark close. Larkin avoids the individual and personal; Oliver includes it as more integral to the experience, though the hospital room remains neutral for all of it.

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Thank you for your insightful and skilled analysis, Jay! Yes, I agree, Larkin feels rather wordy here compared to his normal style. And although we may differ on the exact interpretation, I agree that in Oliver's poem, the word "neutral" is a key one. It's an intriguing word choice.

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I enjoyed this pairing of poems, both new to me. I agree that this is a surprising view of Oliver in a human context rather than a swamp and galoshes. :-) I like the Larkin poem for the metaphysical ambition that it earns with the steady grandeur of iambic pentameter. Oliver’s looser meter is more human and intimate. Larkin inspires dread and awe.

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Thank you for those wonderful comments on the poems, Tara. Dread and awe is a great way to describe the effect of Larkin's poem.

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Really enjoyed this, Jeffrey. Hospitals are great setting for poetry/prose. And, these days, they're so often built on the edge of towns and cities - as if shameful or forgotten; hidden; lodged deep in our collective subconscious alongside our darkest fears - waiting to resurface when circumstances change.

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Thank you, James, and I think you have put it superbly. In one sense, we seem to have outsourced this whole area of our lives—healing and death—to institutions we barely understand.

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Exactly. I've had a few stays in hospital in the past, and that sense of disconnection from the 'outside world' is strong. Loved the sense of humour amongst patients and staff though! Some days, I laughed so much! 🙃😆

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Thanks, June! Yes, it's a great line, isn't it? I'm so glad that you enjoyed the dual reading.

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Apr 16
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I'm glad you liked it! And thanks for visiting.

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