ext_238673 ([identity profile] redheartleaf.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] greatpoetry2005-02-03 03:23 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

Cut Grass

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.

Larkin, Philip. Collected Poems: Philip Larkin. (Noonday
Press - 1993).

Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was a highly-regarded English poet and novelist known for his anti-romantic sensibility and terse style. Educated at Oxford University, Larkin published his first two volumes of poems - The North Ship and XX Poems - at his own expense in 1945 and 1951, respectively. His third volume, The Less Deceived, was published by more conventional means in 1955 to critical acclaim. In addition to writing numerous novels and volumes of verse, Larkin was jazz critic for The Daily Telegraph and librarian at the University of Hull, Yorkshire. He also edited the Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973).

[identity profile] sylphbranching.livejournal.com 2005-02-03 11:01 pm (UTC)(link)
i think that's the cutest, prettiest poem I've ever read by Larkin.
and yet it's still about death.... so amusing.

[identity profile] upendedurn.livejournal.com 2005-02-04 03:11 am (UTC)(link)
I adore This Be the Verse.