Absences

Question 1

What is the significance of the title ‘Absences’?

Answer 1

Larkin contemplates the vast power of the natural world when human influence is ‘absent’

Question 2

In Absences, what connects the following words:
‘tilts’/‘sighs’/‘collapsing’/‘drops’/‘wilting’/‘scrambling’?

Answer 2

These are all verbs - Larkin uses a huge number of verbs in the first stanza to show the fast-changing and energetic natural world

Question 3

‘A wave drops like a _______’

Answer 3

wall

Question 4

Why does Larkin describe how ‘a wave drops like a wall’?

Answer 4

To convey the destructive, almost violent, power of nature. This also perhaps conveys the natural world as unrestricted and free

Question 5

How does the focus shift from the first stanza to the second stanza?

Answer 5

Whereas the first stanza describes the sea, the second depicts the sky

Question 6

Why does Larkin compare the sky to ‘lit-up galleries’?

Answer 6

To present it as something awe-inspiring and beautiful

Question 7

What is the significant of the exclamations that end the poem? ‘Such attics cleared of me! Such absences!’

Answer 7

Larkin depicts a speaker that feels a joyful liberation - by contemplating the raw power of the natural world, his own existence seems trivial