Mr Bleaney by Philip Larkin

Mr Bleaney is an interesting poem in that the free will of the persona is called into question. The previous owner, Br Bleaney, has moved out leaving only a few items behind. Nothing seems all that important to either Bleaney or the persona and there's a suggestion that they both live quite a bland and meaningless life.
Larkin says  "stub my fags on the same saucer-souvenir" which gives the impression that for both of them there was little to do in their free time than to sit around and smoke.
Larkin speculates that neither Bleaney nor the persona were particularly happy about living in this apartment. This is evident when the persona begins imagining Bleaney at home and "telling himself that this is home". This implies that it was not he did not like staying there and actually needed to convince himself that it wasn't really so bad.
The  apartment itself seems to contradict this.  A "thin and frayed" curtain, "no hook/Behind the door" and a "sixty-watt bulb" all suggest that to both Bleaney and the persona this apartment was little more than cheap living space and in no way anything that they could call 'home'.

Sunny Prestatyn by Philip Larkin

I did not think that Sunny Prestatyn was a particularly misogynistic poem. Sure, the woman in the poster seemed to be described in a very sexualised manner, with the rest of the beach "expanding from her thighs", but that was just the way that adverts would have genuinely been like. If anything, "breast-lifting arms" is just a further indication that sex sells, something that Larkin is critical of in other poems such as Essential Beauty. He suggests that it is deceitful advertising.
I think that the second stanza is little more than school boy humour. Although he disagrees with vandalising the poster, he finds the vandalism funny to a certain extent. The description of the graffiti is immature, suggesting that Larkin's views on the matter are similar. For example, it's very difficult to believe that someone who uses the phrase "cock and balls" is being 100% serious. It's quite easy to believe that Larkin is having a quiet little giggle at the cartoon penis scrawled over this woman. I find it hard to believe that this is especially sexist because the vandalism would have the same effect if it had been drawn on a man.

It could also be that whilst Larkin is having a little chuckle at how the poster has been defaced, he is criticising the actual vandals. To me, "huge tits" sounds somewhat ironic, like Larkin is using the lingo of the young people that would have vandalised it in order to make a bit of a mockery of them.
The final stanza (as always with Larkin) takes a much darker tone with an underlying message of violence introduced through the knife used to "stab right through" what is presumably a Hitler-style moustache. It kind of makes us think of rape.


He leaves us with the ambiguous last line "Now Fight Cancer is there". This could mean one of two things:

• Larkin is being literal. The poster got to tatty and was replaced by a cancer research poster.
• Larkin is suggesting that the vandals themselves are cancerous and  that we should take special measures to prevent that sort of thing from happening

Characteristics of Larkin's Poetry

Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings all have some very similar characteristics. They often portray a very reflective and often cynical view of life, suggesting that the persona in most of the poems is a bit of an outsider and an introvert. Isolation isn't always a bad thing in his eyes.

Two key themes that are both VERY prominent are death and time.

His message through the poems is essentially that time will always keep moving forward, once it's gone you can never get it back and it will eventually get us all. This is essentially the same message portrayed in the faux children's internet series 'Don't Hug Me I'm Scared'. This falsely friendly video's underlying message is also that we can never get time back, and the only thing left for us is death.

The persona will often start out as very dismissive, but as the poem progresses will look deeper into the subject of the poem, until reaching an epiphany and then the attitude changes completely.

The Whitsun Weddings- an overview

Larkin's collection The Whitsun Weddings is obviously a very good bit of poetry.

 Is he really a grumpy old man just waiting to die? No, I don't think he was. I think that through The Whitsun Weddings, he is really just reflecting. He often gives us the idea that loneliness isn't always a bad thing. Being on your own gives you time to stop and think about things. About your life. I personally really like this idea.