Imitations by Dannie Abse

This poem is an very personal observation of Abse's: his son is stepping into his father's footsteps and is slowly. It's another one about growing up.

Abse does distance and differentiate himself a little from his son in Imitations though. "He listens to some pop forgeries" suggests that the son listens to music different to what Abse may listen to himself; an attempt at a similar taste, that perhaps in his opinion has tried but not quite succeeded at being as good as what he listened to as a youth.

He then links this to his father, and how he (Abse) was in turn "his duplicate".

Sons by Dannie Abse

This poem is essentially about being a father to a teenage boy that seems to be in a bit of a foul mood. This is evident in the first line "Sarcastic sons slam front doors."
Abse then begins reminiscing about his own youth, how he "was like that" too.
The third stanza focuses on teenagers he has watched in London, which leads him back to think about the doors slammed on a Cardiff evening and how they really aren't all that different no matter where they come from.

The final stanza depicts fairly accurately what it is like to be an adolescent "In adult rooms / the hesitant sense of not quite belonging". This poem really is very accurate.

The Malham Bird (For Joan) by Dannie Abse

This poem is hard to understand without first knowing a little context. The Malham Bird is part of Judaism and would have been something Abse believed in. The story goes that the bird never ate the Forbidden Fruit and so remained in the Garden of Eden without the burden of death. This bird does not know a world with sin.

This is important. Abse is glad that he is not this bird, for the bird might live forever but since it was the only bird to listen and not eat the Forbidden Fruit, it lives in the garden "lonely, immortal". Abse is saying that though his days may be numbered, he'd rather that and be with the one he loves. Like Larkin's Reference Back, the message here is to make the best of what you've got and to live every moment as if it's your last- because it just might be!
Love is blind, according to Abse. It does not take prejudice- "you a Gentile and I a Jew!" shows this. He doesn't care whether she believes the same as he does, as long as she loves him and he love her, and that they aren't lonely like the Malham Bird.

Last Visit to 198 Cathedral Road by Dannie Abse

(Before reading) The name of this poem really stood out for me. It says closure and finality. It's obviously going to be about death.

(After reading) This poem made me think of two things-

1. Home is so Sad by Philip Larkin
2. The Old Apartment, a song by The Barenaked Ladies

First of all, I think the links with Larkin are pretty strong here in that it is about coming back to the family home after the death of a parent (or parents). However, I think that it is so much easier to empathise with the Abse poem because as readers we are FAR more subject to the raw emotion in his poems that we pretty much only see in Larkin when he's talking about music.

I thought of this particular song as I was reading through it because it's also about the idea of going back to a place you once called home and being a little upset about how it couldn't stay that way forever.

A Winter Visit by Dannie Abse

I didn't see this poem as particularly gloomy. Although Abse describes someone who is presumably his mother as "agéd and frail", I can't help but imagine that through all the bird-like imagery he is trying his best to paint the old woman in a very positive light.
Abse himself is, however,upset at how old and willing to die she is but must put on a brave face, saying that he "inhibits a white coat not a black" suggesting that since he's a Doctor he must be particularly thick-skinned and optimistic. Basically, she's not dead yet so he has no real reason to grief.

Musical Moments by Dannie Abse

1.His Last Piano Lesson

The first part of this poem is basically about a boy trapped inside his house having a piano lesson when he could be outside doing literally ANYTHING else.
The listing used in this poem hints at his boredom, showing all the things he'd much rather be doing.
The later stanzas introduce a new theme that is more present in the second half: death ("before Sleep's grisly fictions").


2. Outside a Graveyard

Honestly, I found the second half to this poem a little difficult to understand at first and then connect to the first half.
It seems at first to be a funeral procession observed by an outsider, like Larkin's poems often are. Then it becomes more personal, he knew the person that has died. Maybe a loved one or a close friend.
I tried linking it with the first half and all I could think of was the possibility that this was the grave of the person giving him piano lessons in the first half of the poem. I can't really justify this. Just a gut feeling, really.

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.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter (Not for the faint stomached)

Anyone that knows me well knows that I am a MASSIVE fan of the television show Dexter. You can imagine my excitement when I found out that the show was based (loosely) on a series of books. I immediately took to my Kindle and downloaded the first two in the series; Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter.

The series is basically about a blood-splatter analyst for the Miami PD called Dexter, who also happens to be a serial killer. He follows what is known as the 'Code of Harry' in order to satisfy what he calls his Dark Passenger. The Code was taught to him by his step-father, a cop, so that he doesn't get caught and in order to use the darkness for good. He only kills people that have slipped past the law- murderers, paedophiles etc.

Like many other serial killers, Dexter has a very precise ritual that he carries out for each of his kills. He must first be absolutely certain that his victim is guilty. He can research into their lives for months, finding evidence that pins them to their crimes. He then finds a kill room; somewhere out of the way like a garage or a shed. He fills the room with plastic shrink wrap, covering every single piece of furniture so that he leaves no trace. He finishes the room off with pictures of the person's victims propped up in photo frames around the room. He takes the criminals by drugging them, using a needle, tying them down to a table using duct tape and cuts their clothes from them so he doesn't get blood on them. When they regain consciousness, they find themselves taped to a table and unable to escape. Dexter then explains what they've done to get themselves in that position, takes a sample of blood from their cheek and kills them using one of his many tools. He chops them up post-mortem and disposes of them in the lake. 

The first book focuses on one notorious killer dubbed by the press as 'The Icetruck Killer', who for some reason wants to get to know Dexter a little better. The Icetruck Killer kills hookers that he drains the blood from, chops up into little pieces and then wraps up "like little packages".