Duffy / Larkin

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Created by
Lisa Clark

Cards (23)

  • LARKIN CRIT [King]: "Language which invites understanding even when the ideas expressed are paradoxical or complex"
  • LARKIN CRIT [Andrews]: "his writing is driven by a sense of failure"
  • LARKIN CRIT [Andrews]: "at the centre of Larkin's poetry is the pursuit of self-definition, a self which feels threatened by the proximity of others"
  • LARKIN CRIT [Andrews]: "Larkin's poetry is the pursuit of difference"
  • LARKING CRIT [Larkin]: "don't judge by them [poems]. Some are better than me, but I add up to more than they do"
  • LARKIN CONTEXT: "let me remember that the only married state I know is bloody hell" - from his diary on his parents marriage
  • LARKIN CONTEXT: "men cannot help desiring women and women become undesirable at 26" - in his diary
  • DUFFY CRIT [O'Keeffe]: "concern for the way language can alienate, creates a sense of otherness and distance"
  • DUFFY CRIT [Jody]: "Duffy has an optimistic side that Larkin did not"
  • DUFFY CRIT [Tomkins]: "Her aim is to communicate"
  • DUFFY CONTEXT: "poetry and prayer are very similar"
  • DUFFY CRIT [Motion]: "mixture of direct address and something slightly surreal"
  • DUFFY CRIT [Jones]: "She shows the difficulties that patriarchy present to both men and women"
  • DUFFY CRIT [Hill]: "a kind of religious experience"
  • DUFFY CRIT [Harris]: "these poems are all about love and relationships"
  • LARKIN CONTEXT: lack of religious faith
  • LARKIN CONTEXT: experience writing novels leads to dramatic narrative poems
  • LARKIN CONTEXT: had multiple women on the go and never committed to marriage - due to fathers lack of respect for women?
  • DUFFY CONTEXT: study of philosophy and relationship between language and little things
  • DUFFY CONTEXT: had an affair with a married man at the age of 15, had multiple male lovers before discovering she is a lesbian in later life
  • DUFFY CONTEXT: awareness of the effects of words - maybe influenced by catholic upbringing
  • DUFFY CONTEXT: catholic upbringing raising moral questions
  • Both poets have a heavy colloquial language and themes of domestic issues