Larkin’s writing techniques varied as well as the structure of his poems. Larkin’s techniques include alliteration, repetition and pace. These alter depending on the mood or tone of the poem. Larkin also uses enjambment (the run of lines) in the poem ‘Here’.
The ‘Whitsun Weddings’ collection contain poems with varying perspectives i.e. - speakers/personas. In the poem ‘Mr.Bleaney’ the speaker a man talking about how his fate has turned out to be the same as Mr.Bleaney fate in the way that he is living. Some personas are relating to a character being discussed in a poem, others may be just remembering a time or an environment whilst in Dockery and Son, there is the main speaker and several other characters featured speaking to the main speaker.
The main viewpoints that are conveyed through many of the personas are clearly Larkin’s own perspective on a situation. We know this because of Larkin’s personal background and his feelings towards life from various biographers and critics. For example we know that Larkin had a strong dislike of urban working class areas. This dislike is shown through the persona in the poem ‘Here’.
Larkin shows us our ‘common urban environment’ in the poems ‘Here’, and ‘The Large Cool Store’. It is within these poems that the reader learns Larkin’s personal dislike for the urban environment. An example of Larkin describing our common environment in the poem ‘Here’- “Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows …A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple” From this quotation, when Larkin describes the ‘industrial shadows’, a sinister image is conjured up in the readers mind. ‘A cut price crowd’ describes the working class residents of the area who are trapped in a cut price world.
A lot of Larkin’s common patterns of thought in the ‘Whitsun Weddings’ poetry collection include love (‘Love Songs in Age’), nostalgia (‘MCMXIV’), dislike of urban environments (‘Here’), religion (‘Water’), sentimentality (‘Broadcast’), unfulfillment (‘Faith Healing’), disappointment (‘Toads Revisited’), death (Take One Home For The Kiddies’) and the con of advertising (‘Essential Beauty’). Larkin deals with common patterns of behaviour such as working, traveling, weddings/marriage and many of the above human emotions.
One of the main themes of the above mentioned that is evident in one way or another in many pieces of Larkin’s poetry is love. Larkin gives views on love in his poetry that we know are not his own personal views. This contributes to the ‘Whitsun Weddings’ collection being a broad and satisfying collection of poems because there are many different viewpoints. An example of a persona and Larkin’s personal viewpoint being conflicted is in the poem ‘Broadcast’. This poem contains a very sentimental message of love, and we know that Larkin was definitely not a sentimental type of person.
Unusual points of view are displayed by Larkin in the poem ‘Sunny Prestatyn’. The poem describes how a poster of a beautiful girl had been degradingly vandalized. Instead of Larkin dwelling on the fact that graffiti is defacing nice areas and that the level of society is dropping in standards (which is typical of Larkin’s character), he manages to find a positive message from this that people must distinguish between dreams and reality.
Other unusual points of view from Larkin are found in poems such as ‘Wild Oats’ and ‘Broadcast’. I think this because we know for a fact that Larkin was an anti-social loner who avoided self pity and sentimentality, so to read these very personal poems of love and lost love is very unusual for Larkin because of his personality. The persona in these two poems are very romantic and sentimental- unlike Larkin.
In my opinion, I feel that the ‘Whitsun Weddings’ is a satisfying collection. I think this because they cover a variety of emotions in an effective way. I also think that with the type of personality that Larkin had, it would have been very easy for him to have been tempted into letting his negative views on life and situations spill over into his writing. Instead, he manages to balance good with bad, and put some of his stronger personal views aside to create effective poems. Larkin does keep a lot of his viewpoints in his poetry as and when relevant which adds a more personal touch to his poetry and even give readers a different insight on situations of everyday life.
