Welcome to Litsy!

★★★★☆

#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead

'New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books, too,
Old eyes renew;
So youth and age
Like ink and page
In this house join,
Minting new coin.'

Philip Larkin

'In times when nothing stood
but worsened, or grew strange,
there was one constant good:
she did not change.'

1952-1977 by Philip Larkin

'...
Life is an immobile, locked,
Three-handed struggle between
Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse)
The unbeatable slow machine
That brings what you'll get. Blocked,
They strain round a hollow stasis
Of havings-to, fear, faces.
Days sift down it constantly. Years.'

The Life with a Hole in it by Philip Larkin

'...
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes
...'

Dockery and Son by Philip Larkin

XXIX

Pour away that youth
That overflows the heart
Into hair and mouth;
Take the grave's part,
Tell the bone's truth.

Throw away that youth
That jewel in the head
That bronze in the breath;
Walk with the dead
For fear of death.

#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans

XXI

I dreamed of an out-thrust arm of land
Where gulls blew over a wave
That fell along miles of sand;
And the wind climbed up the caves
To tear at a dark-faced garden
Whose black flowers were dead,
And broke round a house we slept in,
A drawn blind and a bed.
⬇️

#theft #poetrymatters

X

Within the dream you said:
Let us kiss then,
In this room, in this bed,
But when all's done,
We must not meet again.

Hearing this last word,
There was no lambing-night,
No gale-driven bird
Nor frost-encircled root
As cold as my heart.

3⭐️ I enjoyed the early part of Jill, with descriptive campus narrative, and strong characterizations. While the kids in The Secret History inhaled drugs and alcohol, the pupils in Jill have afternoon tea with cakes and scones 👨‍🎓It starts getting weird in the middle, with the main character - poor student John Kemp - becoming a totally different version of himself. Still a good college novel, though.