Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Great Regulars: "Coming" [by Philip Larkin] therefore gives us

a kind of circular thought process: Spring makes us happy, but it is irrational happiness--but it is still happiness . . . and so on. Those competing conclusions churn beneath the smooth surface of the poem and give it a rotating force that is practically seasonal.

Larkin revisits this idea more explicitly about 20 years later in his second great spring poem, "The Trees."

from David Orr: NPR: Grief In Greenness: Two Melancholy Poems Of Spring

~~~~~~~~~~~

No comments :