Postcard to His Wife

This poem is much more personal than Larkin's when he talks about the relationship he has with women

"You" and "I" and "Abse's" -> second personal pronouns

"and the dulcamara of memory" -> bittersweet memories

"and the Venus de Milo is only stone" -> believed to depict the Greek Goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite - but it's only stone to Abse - still and cold - Abse believed that without his wife that life had no meaning

"I know the impoverishment of self" -> feels in poverty without his wife

"So come home. The bed's too big! Make excuses." -> he's lonely without her - feels a void in his heart - feels empty without her in his life

"Hint we are agents in an obscure drama" -> adventures

"and must go North to climb 2000 feet" -> maybe something he and his wife used to do together and was personal to them

He would do anything to have her back

Stanza 3 -> he would be perfectly happy in just his wife's company and the nature around: "cornfields", "hedges" and "roses"

Stanza 4 -> "blessed" to be together if they could be -> "sand dunes and blessed, mimc the old gods" - act how Gods said the happy way to be holy was heavenly love

"whim, "twisting" and "wild" -> adventures together - doing simple things

Excessively devoted to his wife -> unhealthy maybe? - still in mourning

Absence can't make the heart grow fonder because it's not humanly possible to love anymore, more than he loved his wife - his everything -> he has undying and irrevocable love for his wife is no longer alive

The structure - the exclamation marks and the emotions shown make it really realistic - like he is calling out for his wife to come back to him - begging her

Abse -> writes from own experiences

Larkin -> writes from out observer's perspective (of other people's lives)

Connects to Larkin's 'Love Songs in Age', 'An Arundel Tomb' 'Wild Oats'

Red Balloon

Title -> religion - freedom of expression
        -> freedom - happiness - youth - innocence
        -> vibrant

"over chapels, over chimney-pots" -> over the people

About a child who owns a red balloon that others dislike and want to destroy so the boy hides inside away from them -> Abse is standing out - has the ownership of a possession he cares for - relates to his religion of being a jew

"til it shone like living blood" -> connotations of violence and death -> reference to the red balloon and how he is considered an outcast over his religion

"it was my sham, it was my joy" -> oxymoron - confused - like being different but doesn't fit in

"it cased  to be a toy" -> not a game - he takes it seriously

"soared higher like a happiness towards the dark blue sky" -> religion makes him happy but leads to terror and argument

"I boasted of my unique, my only precious" -> too proud of his beliefs/values?

"It's a Jew's balloon" -> look down - frown upon his religion

"it would not burst" -> strong - he fights for his beliefs

"laughed", "cursed", "lunged" and "clawed" -> violent actions - mocking

"bled my nose, cute my eye" -> beliefs destroys himself - gets attacked for his opinions -> references to blood which is red back to the red balloon and how he is interacted with through violence against him and his religion

"Give up", "I don't know exactly why" -> doesn't understand why he should let them get what they want -> prevent him from having a voice and celebrating his religion and what he believes

"brash boys" -> alliteration

"insult my faith and steal my red balloon" -> he's proud of his faith/beliefs - he deserves to have a voice

Links to Larkin's 'Water' and Abse's 'Quests' through faith/religion/beliefs

Leaving Cardiff

Main theme: Identity

change and belonging -> Abse's feelings towards Cardiff

he feels Cardiff is changing -> setting -> Docks - the sea and Cardiff relax him

"evening air" -> sense of ending

"sea-birds drop down" -> natural cycle -> "down to the sea"

"docks" -> "derelictions" -> alone - isolated - ruins

"furthest star seem near" -> familiar surroundings - like home -> Abse is sad to leave - questioning why he's leaving

"me eyes, like spaces, fill" -> crying - emotions 

"flames flare" -> alliteration

sense of place -> situation - poetic devices - structure

Rhyme Scheme -> ABAC ABCC ABAB ABAB ABAB

Stanza 3 -> leaving childhood behind

Stanza 4 -> if he stays in Cardiff he can't be the person he wants to be "made no choice" - shift - self doubt - "can I be the same twice" -> connotes challenging and doesn't want any change

Stanzas 5-7 -> imagery of industrialisation - "Penarth unload and move on" -> things move on even though he's leaving and when he returns they would have changed

Links to Larkin's 'Whitsun Weddings' -> a journey - describes surroundings -> Larkin doesn't get upset like Abse does 

Also links to Larkin's 'Dockery and Son' -> life choices

At Ogmore-by-sea this August Evening

"estuary" -> horizon - part of something bigger

"My father - who, self taught, scraped upon" -> violin usually flows soft - shows contrast

"Darker than the darkening evening" -> reflective of himself - the environment effects a person? or could be pathetic fallacy

"unified" ->spiritual

"The music summons night." -> romantic/intimate

"It's twenty minutes later into August Before the gaudy sun sinks to Australia." -> evening ending - becoming night -> "gaudy" -> sun = artificial - selfish? -> "sinks" - lines to natural theme - refers to ship - prisoners to Australia

"anthracite" -> coal = burning - natural -> its soft glow/sheen makes it haunting

"As its spotlit prow a pale familiar" -> death

"carnival" -> a 'carnival' seems too joyful considering how dark this poem is

"no foghorns howl" -> dogs often howls when sad or are mourning -> wolves howl to signal their location to the rest of the pack and when a member of the pack is hurt, injured or dead = the persona- the night is clear

"here, father, here tonight" -> Abse is reminiscent of his father like Larkin is of his mother

"three far lighthouses converse in dotty exclamation marks" -> these lighthouses are important - hold significance in the poem

"of the tumult the sea" -> sea of should that have died? - carry death to the shore towards a person

Links to Larkin's 'Reference Back' and 'A Winter Visit' -> loss, music and memories - relationship with their mother

Sons

"Sarcastic sons slam" -> alliteration/sibilance

"of Cardiff outskirts where, once captured acres played" -> looking back on how he was in his youth (when he was a son not a father)

"Now my son is like that, altering every day", "I was like that; also like" -> his son is now acting like how he used to -> links to Larkin's 'Dockery and Son' - how father and son are both alike in their youth

"At the frontier of Nowhere order and chaos clash" -> 'frontier of Nowhere' could be referring to youth and wanting to find yourself

"and being adolescent was both prim and brash" -> juxtaposition of two opposites/oxymoron - 'prim and brash' highlights changing emotions

"strange a London door should slam and I think thus. of Cardiff evenings" -> persona is here using opposites to describe his son - a reference to his son not knowing who he is yet? -> "wrongly named" -> "Awkward Anglo-Welsh half town, half countryside"

"son, you are like that and I love you for it. In adult rooms." -> persona could be empathising with his son as he reminds him of himself when he was young - maybe makes him think of the relationship he had with his father

"Too soon maturity will switch off your night thrust fake electronic roots, the nameless becoming wrongly named and your savage darkness bright." -> this here could be the persona looking back with perspective - his warning to his son that this will happen to him too like it did to himself 

Looking back with perspective could link to Larkin's 'Reference Back' and 'Love Songs in Age'

Rhyme Scheme -> C+D and 6th line of stanzas 2,3 and 4 -> Stanza 1 -> D+F -> the pattern begins irregularly - could represent his son's adolescence and changing/erratic emotions?

Welsh Valley Cinema1930s

"slums", "pit" and "darkness" -> lexical field suggests that there is something special in a run down area

"changing colour" -> light and sound - new technology would have been wonderful and magical to him - a chance to see something different? view life in a different way?

"musical asthma" -> it's something beautiful but not quite right - takes your breath away?

"When the Broadway Baby says Goodnight it's Early in the morning'" -> he may be watching Gold Diggers of 1935 - these are lyrics from a song in it called Lullaby of Broadway - strongly links to Larkin and how he writes about the importance of music in his poems

"poor ragged Goldilocks", "glycerine tears" -> there's something fake/false about the tears - they're not quite genuine -> glycerine is very sweet

"cuff-linked Cary Grant", "elegance of chandeliers", "(No files on Cary. No holes in his socks.)" -> Cary Grant is a very famous and talented early Hollywood film star

"Woodbine smoke swirled", "THE END" -> very visual - smoke is quite abstract and relates to when people could smoke in cinemas (public places) - it maybe suggesting the same things about the film -> "THE END" is how most old films end

"malice of the dreary" -> cinema was his escape and now he must return to mundane life

Case History

Abse was a doctor and a jew and is also Welsh

This poem is about a patient who is a Nazi and the conflicts that he has with this patient in terms of religion and beliefs. 

Patient is deliberately offensive -> ranting- seeking out these situations on purpose

"inferior breed" -> says this in quite a 'factual' way - makes it sound scientific - makes it sound like pedigree dog breeding -> animals

"He could liberals, 'white blacks'" -> (liberals are more open minded) - to equal rights - "'white blacks'" - oxymoron -> saying they may be white but they're different underneath

"Himmler" -> more sadistic members of the Nazis - treating this patient reminds him of these horrendous acts and the Nazis and the kind of things they believed in and what they did to people

"dispensary" -> where the medication is (poisonous) - "deadly nightshape" - he could kill him but instead he "prescribed for him as if he were my brother" - treats him with respect - equality

Abse shows that he won't stoop down to his level - he chooses to be the better person - we can see restraint as you can see there's a dislike between them but he doesn't act on it

Last stanza -> loss of control? loss of power from taking the moral high-ground

Mr Bleany

Reference Back

This poem links to Love Song in Age as its using music in order to trigger a memory

nostalgia - looking back on better times

"unsatisfactory" -> disappointing - repetition of formula

"played record after record" -> wasting time - depressing - showing that they would rather remember than have no memory of it at all

"unsatisfactory prime" -> oxymoron - the best part of his life was 'unsatisfactory'

"a huge remembering pre-electric horn" -> he's playing the records on a gramophone (old way - wants it to be raw - like the reality of the memory)

"The flock od notes those antique Negroes blew" -> jazz music - going back to a key point in his past where that kind of music must have been important to him

"lives" on on line and "losses" on the next -> presents juxtapostion between his life then and how it was then

Happy memories reminds him of how his life is now -> his past is taunting him - he obsesses over his regrets - and thinks about how different his life is now than it was in the past

Better to have a short memory because then you wouldn't have to remember how happy you were then as apposed to now -> brings to mind the saying 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all'

As Bad As a Mile