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Poet: Philip Larkin
Poem: Take One Home For The Kiddies
Volume: The Whitsun Weddings
Year: Published/Written in 1960
Comment 7 of 7, added on September 29th, 2009 at 10:23 AM.
I think in the line "but it soon wears off somehow" (the novelty) "Mam were playing funerals now"... i think this suggests that they killed the animal because they got bored of it, and wanted to play a new game "funerals" hmmmmmm.
Lou from United Kingdom
Comment 6 of 7, added on June 9th, 2006 at 4:59 AM.
The animals in this poem lead lives without quality: 'On shallow straw, in shadeless glass'. They also get no sympathy or proper love. Is Larkin suggesting that this theory can be extended to the way that humans live their lives?
Larkin hated children because of the spiteful way that they treated him when he was at school. He portrays their unfeeling and unthinking nature because of their underdeveloped emotions at this stage in their life in the sections of direct speech at the end of each stanza.
His use of the colloquial word 'Kiddies' in the title is a contextual reference as this was a commonly used word in Larkin’s time as well as being derogatory because of his dislike of them.
Abel from United Kingdom
Comment 5 of 7, added on June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 PM.
I think on a more general scale and in the context of, not just The 'Whitsun Weddings' anthology, but his poetry in general, the relevance of the poem is through its context. A poem such as this one is just another way of Larkin conveying his disdain for society, just portraying a different angle. A scholar, whose name I forget, recently wrote an essay in which he points out that the large majority of Larkin's poetry, especially in the WW anthology, is homogenous by nature, and in this light it is very easy to read each poem as one continuous text due to the strikingly similar mood and tone found in the majority of his poems (I am aware there are exceptions, as was he). Therefore, this poem is an apt addition and, in my opinion, worthy of its position in the anthology because of it. However, as an individual poem in itself, then, yes, I agree that it is anything but spectacular :)
Walker
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I think in the line "but it soon wears off somehow" (the novelty) "Mam were playing funerals now"... i think this suggests that they killed the animal because they got bored of it, and wanted to play a new game "funerals" hmmmmmm.
Lou from United Kingdom