How was Philip Larkin a Movement poet?

The Movement poets of the 1950s in England pushed back against the many experimentations of the Modernist poets of the earlier part of the twentieth century. Modernist poetry, such as that by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, was often highly allusive (therefore aimed at an educated reader) and difficult to understand. In contrast, the Movement poets wrote in simple language and in a traditional style that was easily accessible to the average person.

Larkin is a Movement poet in his use of simple language wedded to commentary about contemporary life in post-World War II Britain. For example, in his poem "Church Going," he focuses on the loss of religious faith in the everyday life of ordinary British folk of his period. He uses plain language as his speaker states he is:

wondering too
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show
Their parchment plate and pyx in locked cases

Yet Larkin, a good Movement poet, also uses traditional poetic devices, such as alliteration (which is when words that begin with the same consonant are placed in close proximity). Words such "cathedrals chronically" and "parchment," "plate," and "pyx" create a pleasing and old-fashioned sense of rhythm.

How was Philip Larkin a Movement poet?

The Movement was a group of British poets in the 1950s that included Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, D.J. Enright and Donald Davie. They were known for an anti-Romantic stance, opposition to modernism and internationalism, return toi tradition verse forms, and focus on ordinary lower and middle class life. Larkin's poetry is typical in its use of traditional metrical forms, self-deprecating stance, understated language, and portrayals of ordinary daily life. Like other members of the Movement, he graduated from a grammar rather than independent school, and retained a strong identity as a provincial "small Englander". A typical example of his attitude towards life and work, that typifies the Movement in it's portrait of the ordinary, is the ending of "Toads Revisited":

No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:...

What is movement poetry? Would you consider Philip Larkin to be a movement poet?

The so-called "movement" was a loosely defined and even more loosely organized group of English poets who, in the aftermath of World War II, sought to turn away from the kind of modernism championed by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound as well as from the kind of neo-Romanticism represented by Dylan Thomas and (to some extent) by the early W. B. Yeats.  The "movement" poets wanted a poetry that was clearer, simpler, more obviously structured, and more modest in its style and subject matter. Larkin was early identified as a figure associated with "the movement," and rightly so.

According to a very fine but anonymous eNotes article (cited below), the "poetic reaction" of the "movement poets"

took the form of formal verse, tightly patterned, as against the free-verse style represented by Thomas. Often they returned to eighteenth century patterns, with the ironic tone that accompanied that verse. The irony was subversive, mocking, often self-deprecating. It was very aware of elitism, inflated language and attitudes. Poetic utterance came as understatement, often tentatively expressed.

Philip Larkin's poetry consistently displays almost all of the traits already mentioned. For example, his very brief poem "Talking in Bed"

• deals with a common, mundane experience
• is written in very plain and straightforward language
• has a clear stanzaic structure (three lines in each stanza, with a predictable rhyme scheme)
• deals with the ironies of relations between people and between people and nature
• is understated
• and ends with a stanza that is both understated and ironic:

It becomes still more difficult to find

Words at once true and kind,

Or not untrue and not unkind.

Notice the emphasis here on both truth and kindness (common but important values) as well as on the difficulty of attaining either in many human relationships, including (or perhaps especially) in the most intimate relationships.

What is movement poetry? Would you consider Philip Larkin to be a movement poet?

Please see the link below; hope it helps!

Was Philip Larkin a pessimist and a member of "The Movement"?

Philip Larkin was a "pessimist" in several respects. First, he did not believe in an after-life. He believed that death was final and that religion was a somewhat delusive human invention designed to help people cope with this brutal fact. Secondly, Larkin was a "pessimist" in the sense that he seemed to believe that most of what he valued in life, such as love and beauty, is mutable and cannot last.

Perhaps the classic expression of Larkin's bleak view of death appears in his poem "Aubade":

. . . this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round. (27-30)

Death, the speaker says, is something

. . . that we can't escape,

Yet can't accept. (44-45)

Some might call this pessimism; Larkin himself might have preferred to call it realism -- a simple willingness to face facts, however unpleasant.

More evidence of Larkin's "pessimism" can be found in his poem "Church Going," in which the speaker assumes that religion will and almost certainly must fade and lose most of its influence. The speaker is left wondering,

When churches fall completely out of use,

What we shall turn them into . . . . (22-23)

Note the inevitability implied by the word "When": the speaker does not wonder if churches will become obsolete; he takes it for granted that they will.  Likewise, he later assumes that even "superstition, like belief, must die" (34). Although the poem does end by suggesting that a few people, at least, will always seeking wisdom of some sort (59-63), in general the tone of the work might aptly be described as "pessimistic."

Similarly, in the poem "Talking in Bed," the speaker describes a now-strained romantic relationship in which

It becomes still more difficult to find

Words at once true and kind,

Or not untrue and not unkind. (10-12)

Here even love, which might have seemed at least a temporary answer to (or refuge from) nothingness, is mutable and fades.

It is not difficult to find many works by Larkin which seem to suggest a "pessimistic" view of life, such as the poem "High Windows." At the end of that work, the speaker thinks of "high windows":

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. (18-20)

Likewise, an emphasis on unappealing mutability appears in the final lines of "Sad Steps," where the speaker thinks of

. . . the strength and pain

Of being young; that it can't come again,

But is for others undiminished somewhere. (16-18)

Youth is a source of both "strength and pain," but it is inevitably mutable, even for those who "somewhere" presently enjoy it.

As to the second question, Larkin was indeed associated with the so-called "Movement" poets of the late 1950s. However, this was never a formal group with a defined or shared manifesto. Larkin himself was too much of an individualist ever to sign on for membership in any group that would dictate how and why he would or should write poetry. He sympathized with some of the principles associated with "the Movement," especially their desire to make poetry accessible again and their desire to avoid the excesses of both modernism and the sort of neo-Romanticism associated with Dylan Thomas. But in the final analysis Larkin was always his own man.

Is Philip Larkin considered a poet of The Movement, or a middle course between The Movement poets and the Modernists?

Philip Larkin is generally acknowledged to be a poet of The Movement, which grew up out of and was a reaction against the Modernist movement. Each has distinguishing characteristics that are opposed to each other and Larkin's work fits firmly in the characteristics that define The Movement. These characteristics pertain to form, self, individualism, and realism.

Modernism rejected conventional poetic form and presented itself as a fragmentation of form, which was visible in experimentation with genre and the fragmentation of time, which presented events in a non-chronological, non-linear, non-unified order. Self, the ontological representation of the speaker and/or writer, is alienated--from self and society--and similarly fragmented. Characterization or defining qualities are obscure and possibly shallow, making knowledge of the presented self elusive.

In Modernist poetry, individualism is a paramount concern. In this sense, individualism refers to representing the speaker's and/or writer's personal, individual experience regardless of whether it may or may not represent a universal commonality amongst people. A correlated characteristic is the representation of a Modernist world view that is anti-realism, meaning Modernist poems are not meant nor desired to be held up to reality as a true representation or a reliable mirror of life or the world.

On the other hand, the poets of The Movement embraced a return to form as a reaction against the fragmentation of form begun by the Modernists. Regarding self, The Movement offered straightforward representations of the self of the poetic speaker or writer, and, in that sense, presented a positive ontological view of self as opposed to the Modernist alienated ontological view. In correlation with self, the individualism of Modernism gave way to The Movement's representation of the individual in relation to society, reacting to, and often reacting against, society.

While Modernists embraced experimentation of form, The Movement embraced the forms and conventions of previously established poetic genres, embracing structure in reaction against the Modernist's abandonment of structure. In addition, while Modernists adhered to anti-realism, The Movement reflected the reality of the mundane commonplace that was more realistic than the realism begun in the Romantic period. Whereas Wordsworth, the founder of English poetic Romanticism, laced his realism with metaphor and what might be called low poetic diction, The Movement eschewed literary devices, striving for plain, direct language devoid of simile, metaphor, symbolism or other literary techniques.

Larkin's poetry displays all these characteristics, from the structure of his composition to the straightforward ontological representation of self devoid of alienation to the individual experience in society (not eccentrically isolated) to the form and conventions of poetry that couched the descriptions of the unembellished commonplaces of life. Philip Larkin is in fact a true representative of The Movement because his poems both adhere to and help define the definitive characteristics of The Movement.

[For further information, see the links to TextEtc.com and EdSitement, National Endowment for the Arts from which this answer is drawn.]