How can Philip Larkin's poetry be used to address the marginal or neglected?

The marginal or neglected can be seen to refer to individuals, a class or nation, to ideas that have been marginalised, to neglected forms such as poetry, and to the marginalised self. Philip Larkin is renowned for his use of the colloquial in his poetry, and he renews the importance of everyday language and words, that have been neglected and marginalised in forms of expression. His poems have the tone of the ordinary day. Through this use of language, he reflects on the loss of identity and to the neglected state of England due to modernisation and industrialisation. Poetry itself is a specialist form; however Larkins poetry can be seen as homely and less dramatic. He brought back poetry as a relevant and accessible medium, as it is easily marginalised. Larkin is a poet who concentrates on absence and reality, the mundane, small and intricate aspects of everyday life that are important, but often ignored. He depicts an English post-war setting, struggling with destitution and despair, affectively describing dislocated humanity within the disruption of modernism. His poetry produces a sense of agency, and his own marginalisation and loneliness is also reflected.

Larkins poem, Maiden Name is a meditation on identity, memory, language and tradition. He represents the name as a disposable object, commenting on the preserving of values and the loss of them. The new consumerist age of disposal can be seen to be referred to here. He creates a sense of an unused, neglected old self and a past identity that has been lost through marriage. The womans maiden name has been used and neglected, being a phrase applicable to no one (l.8).

The use of iambic metre gives weight to Larkins everyday language, emphasising how easy it is to lose your identity. The meter makes a seemingly congested line easy to read, as the stresses make it flow naturally; for example, It means what we feel now about you then (l.15). The rhythm reflects the want to take time leisurely, rather than

Bibliography: Larkin, Philip, Collected Poems, (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2003). Morrison, Blake, The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the 1950s, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). Walcott, Derek, The Master of the Ordinary: Philip Larkin, What The Twilight Says, (London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1998). The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press, [accessed February 2009].