Love Songs In Age Flashcards
(8 cards)
Theme:
Ageing, loss, absence, lack of identity, motherhood, time, past and present, memory
‘She kept her songs, they took so little space’
-vague reference to ‘she’ makes the poem universally applicable + makes it more general
-weakens her memories and makes them insignificant as it suggests that the memories of love occupy such a small space
‘The covers pleased her’
-soft, simple and beautiful justification
-she needs to justify the need to keep them though (hints at a sadness)
‘One bleached from lying in a sunny place’
‘One marked in circles by a vase of water’
‘One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, And coloured, by her daughter’
-anaphora and adjectives intensifies the idea that they have been left to be ruined and age
-fading and damaged nature of the memories
-lack of care and almost abandonment for something that once brought great joy
‘So they had waited till in widowhood She found them, looking for something else’
-personification: the records have been given life through the memories that they hold and are willing to holdout and wait to re-give her a moment of love when she needs it
-suggests the privacy and intimacy of these memories that she can only go back to them when she is alone + or its she’s not been allowed to revisit them before (she wasn’t allowed to keep any aspect of her past life?)
-hidden nature
‘To pile them back, to cry, Was hard, without lamely admitting how It had not done so then, and could not now’
-her experience of love didn’t live up to it (what she has previously hoped to see/experience)
-regret
-empty promises
-lack of change
Structure:
-The poem is only made up of three sentences in total with the first two being much longer and spanning multiple stanzas. The last, however, only goes over four lines. This is perhaps a reflection of the powerful build-up filled with positive, loving imagery being halted by a short, disappointing realisation present within the poem.
-The poem has three octets (eight line stanzas). They can also be called octaves, which implies that Larkin wanted readers to think of music when they realised how many lines each stanza is.
-It is a regularly structured poem, with a strong rhyme scheme: every stanza follows the same pattern of abacbcdd. The second and sixth lines are shortened, and there are run on lines towards the end of each stanza.
-Frequent use of caesura and enjambment produces a reflection that moves irregularly towards the important and cheerless couplet at the end
Context:
-completed in 1957
-thought to be based on Larkin’s mother (deeply personal poem for Larkin)
-his mother was known to play sentimental songs on the piano which Larkin deemed to be a ‘superficial expression of emotion’
