Duffy & Larkin AO5

Critical Interpretations for Philip Larkin's "Whitsun Weddings" and Carol Ann Duffy's "Mean Time"

Duffy (on her own use of language)

“I like to use simple words, but in a complicated way”

Preston (on Duffy’s works)

“Love involves as much suffering as it does joy”

Randolph (on Duffy and Larkin’s differences)

“Duffy has an optimistic side that Larkin did not, most visible in her many love poems”

Randolph (on Duffy and her similarities to Larkin)

“Duffy shares Larkin’s tragic view of life … failure, loneliness, isolation and emptiness haunt her verse”

Duffy (on her own collection)

(Mean Time details) “the different ways which time brings about change or loss”

O’Reilly (on Duffy’s poetry)

(An) “exploration of the deepest recesses of human emotion, both joy and pain”

Malcolm (on Duffy)

(Duffy) “challenges traditional binary definitions”

McEwan (on Duffy)

(Duffy) “rewrites the canonical love poem”

Viner (on Duffy)

(Duffy’s poems are) “filled with lost loves and yearning for the past”

O’Reilly (on Duffy)

(Duffy offers) “an insight into such disturbed minds”

Golding (on Larkin)

“His poetry simply reflects his own life”

Ricks (on Larkin’s poetry)

“It is a study of self-pity”

Appleyard (on Larkin)

“He is an advocate of misanthropy and pessimism”

Larkin (on his own life)

“Half of my days are spent in black, surging, twitching, boiling hate”

Motion (on Larkin)

“Death, in Larkin’s view, is an utterly comfortless blanket”

Cox (on Larkin’s use of nature)

“Larkin uses nature as a medium for discussing … how transient and pointless everything in the world is”

Navemore (on Larkin’s narrative perspective)

“Larkin seldom presents himself as anything but the onlooker”

Larkin (on ‘An Arundel Tomb’)

“Love isn’t stronger than death just because statues hold hands for 600 years”

Cox (on Larkin)

“Birth, death, funerals, love, community and marriage are all degraded at Larkin’s hands”

Jardine (on Larkin)

(Larkin was) “a casual, habitual racist and easy misogynist”