Poetry Essay Prompt #2 (2007)

In Philip Larkin’s poem “Here”, the poet takes us on a journey, using many literary elements to travel from the busy city to the quiet rural land “beyond a beach of shapes and shingle.”  The poem is itself a paradox in that the places in the poem are described with vivid imagery and detail, but without judgment as to favor, and the “here” ends up somewhere else that is “out of reach”.

The poem contains four stanzas, each containing eight lines, with an alternating rhyming scheme where mostly every other line rhymes, but occasional adjacent lines rhyme, giving the poem both structure and informality.  The structure and informality is consistent with the mostly nonjudgmental nature of the poet’s descriptions.

The first stanza contains description of moving with the word “swerving” used a couple of times, implying an element of both surprise and urgency to get past the industry and traffic and through the fields that aren’t well enough kept to be meadows.  The journey takes a final “swerve” past the people to get to a quieter landscape of “skies and scarecrows, haystacks” and hares”.  The poet uses this alliteration to add an element of contrast, highlighting the change in the sounds of the landscape he is describing.  

The next stanza gives additional description and imagery of the rural to urban transition.  In this stanza, the poet does judge the urban life a little unfavorable as he uses words like “crowded”, “dead” and “stealing” to describe the activity of the people getting to their “desires” to buy “cheap suits” and other kitchen and household appliances. 

The third stanza gives more physical description of the city to include “the slave museum”, “tattoo-shops”, and “consulates”.  As we pass out of the city the “loneliness clarifies” and we get to the “here” that the poet obviously prefers. 

The final stanza uses paradox like “hidden weeds flower” to give the idea that beauty can be hidden in what someone might consider a weed implying that one’s perspective is important in the discovery of significance in the things around you.  The possibilities of the undeveloped landscape give it an awe inspiring quality that the developed city has lost. The “unfenced existence” is liberating.  The poet uses the contrast of shadows in the first stanza to the sun in the last stanza to demonstrate his preference for the rural liberating “here”.