Talking in Bed

When “Talking in Bed” was published in 1964, Larkin had by this point in his career spent nearly a decade associated with a group of young English poets collectively known as The Movement. The term The Movement was coined in an article in The Spectator in October 1954 that named Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn, John Holloway, Donald Davie, and D. J. Enright. Larkin was not named in this article because The Less Deceived, the volume that established his literary reputation, would not appear until the following year. In 1956, Robert Conquest compiled Nine Lines, a poetry anthology that represented the work of The Movement, and included a number of poems by Larkin. Conquest wrote in his introduction that the poetry of the 1950s in England showed a marked departure from that of its predecessors. According to Conquest, “the most important general point would be that it submits to no great systems of theoretical constructs nor agglomerations of unconscious commands. It is free from both mystical and logical compulsions and – like modern philosophy – is empirical in its attitude to all that comes” (quoted in Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life by Andrew Motion, 1993, pp. 243-44).

For some years, Larkin denied that he had a connection with The Movement, claiming that, with the exception of Kingsley Amis, he did not know any Movement poets well. As the years went by, however, he softened his stance. It became clear to Larkin that The Movement was a genuine literary movement in the mid- to late 1950s that represented a clear break with Modernist poetry and that his own work fit broadly into its aims and practices. Larkin wrote about life in a down-to-earth way, more a cautious realist than a romantic, and he, like the other Movement poets, distinguished themselves not only from Modernism but also from the neo-romantic verse produced in the 1940s by British poets such as Kathleen Raine, David Gascoyne, and Dylan Thomas, who often employed surrealistic and mythic imagery.

In particular, Larkin resonated with The Movement’s break with Modernism. Modernism was an artistic movement that arose in response to the devastation suffered by Western civilization during and after World War I (1914-18). In poetry, it is associated with the work of poets such as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden. Modernism, a radical departure from nineteenth-century poetry, was experimental in form and expression. Larkin, however, criticized the work of the Modernists as too obscure, often singling out Pound. Larkin, like all of the poets of The Movement, rejected Modernist experimentation in favor of a return to more traditional forms. Larkin wrote in formal verse, employing rhyme and traditional metrical forms, writing for a broader audience of people who did not need to recognize literary allusions or understand complicated symbolism in order to appreciate poetry. Larkin often wrote in plain language, rather than self-consciously poetic diction, and he often employed colloquial language, unlike the experimental Modernists.

The poets of The Movement all developed in their own distinctive ways, but it was Larkin, who, ironically, seemed to remain closest to its central ideas throughout his poetic career. It was Larkin’s ability to write for people who might not consider themselves readers of contemporary poetry that gained him such a wide following in England from the 1950s to the 1970s and beyond.