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Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. How are you, jazz? Today to start out some hot jazz!

Hello everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. How are you, jazz? Today to start out some hot jazz!

Henry Red Allen and Pee Wee Russell. Among others, this is Philip Larkin's music. We're talking about Philip Larkin today. What a guy, what a poet, a great lover of jazz.

When he heard this, his life was changed. Music from then on was measured against this standard and very little measured up.

So, this will be an interesting day. A fun one. We're going to roam around a bit. The thing about Philip Larkin is I discovered him and his poetry when I was about 20 or so and I fell in love. Maybe he was my Henry Red Allen and Pee Wee Russell. This was the guy.

I got his collected works and read the poems they spoke to me. His self-deprecation is living life within limits. It's very English. Kind of bitter, kind of cramped. Kind of woe is me. And for me, a Midwesterner to my soul.

In Midwest, where we learn that life has limits. My small town was constant soul. This was it. It was like all the people I knew, all the grown-ups with all their wild schemes and heartbreaking failures. Except Larkin was also incredibly smart and he liked poetry and the poetry itself.

It was the stuff of genius, wonderful verse, clever rhymes and not rhymes and very, very funny.

My name is calls him a novelist's poet and that makes sense because Larkin was a novelist first of all. But then, even in his poetry, although it's technically accomplished, he was a good versifier, kind of a throwback in that sense.

You know, one of those poets who doesn't ignore all the rules and doesn't break all the rules, but who follows enough rules to make you appreciate that he's putting some restrictions on himself.

So he sort of earns his chops as a poet that way. I guess you might say that's a jazz phrase, by the way. Earns his chops.

He earns his chops as a poet, but he's a novelist's poet. What does that mean? Well, he has characters sometimes himself and sometimes other people and he conveys their human dilemma and their human struggle with the novelist's eye.

There's observation, acute observation and character writ large and character writ small.

Interestingly, what a great word. Interestingly, what a terrible word to interestingly.

Is that really the transition we're using here at the history of literature? Interestingly, is the time to fire some more interns.

Interestingly, shouldn't we just put that word in front of every single sentence?

We have to say that we have to announce that the sentence is interesting. Interestingly, I'm Jack Wilson. Welcome to the show.

Now we have to fire some producers too. That was just my example.

Interestingly, that was just my example. Interestingly, I wasn't calling for the theme song. Interestingly, you're fired.

Okay, let's get back on track. We can tell what Larkin was like as a novelist. Perhaps from something he said about England's most celebrated and my revered novelist.

Charles Dickens.

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