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A poem by Philip Larkin that describes his train journey from Lincolnshire to London on a sunny Whitsun weekend, where he observes the weddings of strangers. The poem explores the themes of time, change, and coincidence, as well as the contrast between the rural and urban landscapes.
"The Whitsun Weddings" was written by British poet Philip Larkin and first published in his collection The Whitsun Weddings in 1963. The poem recounts the speaker's train journey from the east of England to London and his observations along the way.
- Summary
- Analysis, Stanza by Stanza
- Historical Background
Larkin’s ‘The Whitsun Weddings was the title of one of his books of poetry, published in 1964. It is one of his longest poems, at eight stanzas of ten lines each, and it describes a train journey from Kingston upon Hull through the countryside. As the train churns through the heatwave that the narratordescribes, he gradually expands his view to tak...
Stanza One
Larkinian poems focus on microcosm worlds, full of the daily hustle and bustle of people getting about their business. In the opening, the narrator’s life is measured in numbers: one-twenty, for time, three-quarters-empty for the train; he creates, in the space of a few lines, this world that, at once, seems both important and hurried, as well as empty and slightly sad. Larkin also had a tendency to write on trains for quite a few of his poems, as he found that this gave him the opportunity t...
Stanza Two
English countryside was considered – both in poetry and beyond – to be some of the most beautiful that the world has seen. England poetry, in particular nature poetry, had been built on this idea of the English countryside. As Elizabeth Barrett Browningwrote in The Herefordshire Landscape: The notion of the Romantic countryside, according to Larkin, has been sullied by the presence of modernization: the canals ‘with floating of industrial froth’ with towns ‘new and nondescript, / approached w...
Stanza Three
Larkin believed that he needed to be aloof in order to write poetry, which was chiefly concerned with man – however, Larkin had a general distaste for the people he saw, labeling, for example, people as ‘sullen flesh inarticulate’ and ‘ageing and bitter’. He is too aloof from the audience he wants to communicate with. Note the way that he refers to the girls ‘in parodiesof fashion, heels and veils / all posed irresolutely,’ making them into waxwork people, making them frozen in place, and mor...
As was quoted in the Paris Review of 1982, “my life is as simple as I can make it.” Larkin was a bachelor who worked as a university librarian in Hull. He never attended paraliterary/cultural activities (such as poetry readings, lectures, and talks) and ignored and disliked foreign literature. He never went abroad, though he loved jazz and frequent...
- Female
- Poetry Analyst
The Whitsun Weddings is a collection of 32 poems by Philip Larkin. It was first published by Faber in the United Kingdom on 28 February 1964. It was a commercial success, by the standards of poetry publication, with the first 4,000 copies being sold within two months.
- Philip Larkin
- United Kingdom
- 1964
- Faber and Faber
A poem by the British poet Philip Larkin about his surprise encounter with wedding parties on a train ride in 1955. The poem explores the themes of social satire, nostalgia, and loss in a witty and elegiac style. Learn about the poem's structure, imagery, and context from the author's commentary and analysis.
The Whitsun Weddings" is one of the best known poems by British poet Philip Larkin. It was written and rewritten and finally published in the 1964 collection of poems, also called The Whitsun Weddings. It is one of three poems that Larkin wrote about train journeys.
17 ago 2016 · A Short Analysis of Philip Larkin’s ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ is the title poem in Philip Larkin’s 1964 volume of poems. The poem, describing a journey from Hull to London on the Whitsun weekend and the wedding parties that Larkin sees climbing aboard the ...
