James Booth (1)

The reputation of the best poet of the second half of the 20th century took a beating in a biography in the 1990s that portrayed him, more or less fairly, as a “pathetic figure: a racist, misogynist, death-fixated porn addict whose refusal to commit to any of the women he was blithely three-timing stole from them the best years of their lives,” as the Guardian put it.

But the poems are un-dismissible. So as long as the poems persist, we will have to go back to the life that made them.

He comes out a bit better on this go-round. He is contextualized, though not excused. Less sensationalism, and more understanding.

My favorite single fact in the book: a lifelong bicyclist, he only got a car late in life. He chose an Audi, because the name reminded him of Auden. I have chosen cars for dumber reasons.… (mehr)

I have thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful and academically focused biography of one of our best modern poets, Philip Larkin. This is a much more well rounded tome, which in comparison to Motions' rather sad and misjudged biography I read beforehand, this deserves my recommendation. However, Booth's style is to reject the poet's advice not to read his poems autobiographically and thus to read too much of the poet himself into the art. I beg to differ in that he created personae that reflected his moods and life.

Larkin was well above this kind of thing, of course - and said so more than once. That isn't to say he could avoid some degree of self-revelation, such is the nature of art, but the poems are not diaries of his inner life - not as Booth so often reads, them, anyhow. Larkin created personae towards whom we could relate easily and deeply. Larkin's poems reveal starkly truthfully, using straightforward language that belies its complexity of meaning and style, the human condition. They act as revealing mirrors of our own souls and are as relevant today as when they were written: "‘Nothing, like something, happens anywhere".… (mehr)