Study and Discussion

1. Speak on the poem title. Does it convey the message of the poem?

2. What is the theme of the poem? Identify the subject matter of each stanza.

3. Does the poet perceive the things described as for the better or for the worse?

4. How is the preoccupation with time expressed in the poem?

5. The poem was written in 1973. Do you think its message is topical nowadays? Prove your point.

Exercises and Assignments

I. Comment on the external structure of the poem. What is special about the rhythm?

II. What vocabulary does the poet use most? Give examples of colloquial words.

III. Explain Larkin’s frequent usage of nouns with negative connotations such as louts, filth, slum, greeds and garbage.

IV. How is the struggle between the past and the present shown in stanza 2? What stylistic device is used?

V. What image of business words does the author create? Comment on the word collocation “spectacled grins”.

VI. Speak on the usage of alliteration throughout the poem. What ideas does it help to express?

VII. What effect do the tenses used create? How does the tense usage change from the beginning till the end of the poem?

VIII. Fill in the gaps using a suitable word or word combination from the synonymic row. Change the grammatical form of a word if necessary.