Larkin's blues

by B. J. Leggett

Until his recent fall from grace in the wake of the publication of some of his letters and a disparaging biography, Philip Larkin (1922-1985) was widely praised as the "unofficial laureate of post-1945 England" and "the best-loved poet of his generation.". A longtime jazz and blues enthusiast, Larkin drew upon both kinds of music as his model for a poetry that would oppose the modernism of Eliot and Pound. In Larkin's Blues, B. J. Leggett not only demonstrates the extent to which Larkin's "jazz life," as he referred to it, informed his poetry but also effectively articulates the wider confluence of music and poetry. This accessible study incorporates jazz and blues criticism and discussion of such artists as Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Cole Porter, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles to illustrate the significance of musical intertext in Larkin's poetry.