The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I February 2016 I Vol. II, Issue I I ISSN : 2395 4817

The Movement Poetry : A Brief Analysis

Dilber Mehta

Assistant Professor M. Sc. IT Programme Veer Narmad South Gujarat University Surat, Gujarat, INDIA.

Abstract

There have been several controversies and debates regarding the existence of the Movement of the 1950s.However this Movement has been of considerable importance in a sense that it has established a break from earlier traditions of poetry and produced works of enormous importance.

This paper looks at the major traits of the Movement poetry, the Movement Poets and analyses The Movement as an important progression of the British Literary Scene of the 1950s.

Keywords : The Movement Poetry, The Movement Poets, Major traits of the Movement poetry.

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

1. Introduction:

There have been several controversies and debates regarding the existence of the Movement of the 1950s.However this Movement has been of considerable importance in a sense that it has established a break from earlier traditions of poetry and produced works of enormous importance. This paper looks at the major traits of the Movement poetry, the Movement Poets and analyses The Movement as an important progression of the British Literary Scene of the 1950s. 2. The Twentieth Century British Poetry: Each decade of a century has thrown up a poetic idiom to match the times. Throughout the 20th century, modern British poetry became progressively more varied and comprehensive moving away from the “centre” (the academic-oriented and predominately poetic scene of London) to include a wide range of poetry from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and English-speaking countries overseas. As the British Empire shrank and Britain’s former colonies attained independence, the new immigrant population began to develop their own cross-cultural English Language poetry using vernacular, slang or regional dialects. After the 1960s a growing number of poets outside the mainstream got recognition. Poets from different ethnic, class and cultural backgrounds are now included in Contemporary English poetry. Peter Finch in his article entitled British Poetry since 1945 comments on this change. —— “Since 1945 British Poetry has moved steadily from what many regard as twentieth century parochial to a twenty-first century international”(Finch, 1). The twenties were the modernist years with an emphasis on experimentation with form and freedom of subject matter; there was a conscious appropriation of poetry to the use of high culture during this decade. However with international fascism on the rise and the imminence of war and the coming of the economic depression, the thirties, also called the Auden decade, threw up an urgent political poetry. The “Macspaunday” supplied the poetic idiom appropriate to that decade, an idiom informed by public school Marxism and Freudian beliefs. When war broke out in 1939, the impulse to warn which had characterized Auden’s verse was no longer there. The spectre of death and destruction was uppermost in the public mind and the forties needed a new poetic idiom which was supplied by Dylan Thomas, the Apocalyptic poets and the poets of the Celtic Renaissance. Their Neo-Platonic poetry of visionary intensity and thundering rhythms fulfilled a religious need and affirmed life amidst death and decay and disintegration. But poetry after 1945 changed and kept pace with developments in society, with the zeitgeist. The name given to this general tendency after the war was the Movement. 3. The Movement: Group identity is a usual trend in the literary history. As there are University wits in the 16th century, the Pre-Raphaelites in the 19th century in similar strain writers of the 1950s are given a group identity for a short period of time under the title as Movement writers. The Movement refers to the particular movement of the 1950s with a definite group of poets, characteristics, specific aims and manifesto, and its identity as an important document in literature. The Movement was a reaction against the excessive romanticism of the previous identifiable major movement in British poetry; the New Apocalyptics. They had been irrational, incoherent and outrageous whereas the Movement poets tended towards anti-romanticism, rationality and sobriety. John Press has described it as —— “a general retreat from direct comment or involvement in any political or social doctrine” (Press, 76). The Movement produced two anthologies: Poets of the 1950’s by D.J.Enright (1955) and The New Lines (1956) by Robert Conquest. He described the connection between the poets as ——‘little more than a negative determination to avoid bad principles’ (Conquest, 5). These ‘bad principles’ mean excess in

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

terms of themes and stylistic devices. The introduction to the New Lines targeted the excesses of the 1940 poets especially Dylan Thomas and Barker. A second New Lines anthology appeared in 1963, by which time The Movement came into existence in the shape of The Group. It was the most intellectually fashionable coterie in Britain in the 1950s.It had an elaborate and controversial history in the practice of poetry. A theoretical basis emerged as a reaction against Eliot’s notion that contemporary poetry “must be difficult” and against the wordy obscurities of the 1940s. The Movement in general, seems to have played an important and significant role in leading English poetry from Modernism to Postmodernism. There was something peculiar, new and unprecedented about the Movement. It connoted the socio - cultural as well as literary identity of the group. Socio -cultural group identity was soon to become a prominent feature of postmodern mass society with plurality of culture. The Movement as the new development had obtained coherence. The work of its poets nurtured naturally, was unreceptive to myth, was conservatively pitched and was intentionally formal and clear. Thus it can be perceived that the Movement has staged a rebellion against the modern poetry of the 1920s, represented by Eliot and Pound. 4. Origin and Development of the Movement: The Key factors responsible for the origin and development of the Movement were the Friendships made at Oxford and Cambridge between the different Movement poets and another major role was played by Journalism in the development of the Movement The Movement took its first breath in Oxford and then in Cambridge in the 1940s when the young writers came close to one another. They were not mature scholars with serious concern about life but were undergraduate students studying at Oxford or Cambridge. Their interaction with one another influenced their writing in the beginning of their career as literary artists. Important influences on these “Oxford poets” were Empson and Auden. By 1951, the first stage of the Oxford influence on the Movement had been completed and this was underscored by Bateson founding Essays in Criticism as a match to the work of Scrutiny, and publishing articles by Movementeers notably Amis, Holloway, Davie, Wain, Enright, Larkin and Conquest. Essays in Criticism became the only Oxford “contact” between Movement poets as the poets dispersed in different directions later on. Commenting on the importance of the cohesive Movement Morrison remarks ── “ Without those friendships neither the group programme nor the impressive individual works which emerged out of it would have not been possible.” (Morrison, 29) At Oxford, Amis, Larkin and Wain, and subsequently, Elizabeth Jennings came up at about the same time; Larkin was admired by Amis and Wain, and these mutual admirations led to actual similarities in their writings. Cambridge was also a place of significance for the making of the Movement. Cambridge recruits to the Movement were Gunn, Davie, and Enright. While their contacts with each other were limited by the exigencies of the war situation, they were united by their common loyalties and predilections. They were all admirers of F. R. Leavis’s rigor and skepticism. J. W. Saunders has pointed out that the periodicals and magazines can often ‘compensate the poet for lack of centers in which he can meet his colleague’ and around 1950- with Amis in Swansea, Larkin in Belfast, Davie in Dublin, Enright in Birmingham and Wain in Reading- such compensation was undoubtedly essential to the formation of a Movement aesthetic ( Saunders 213). The Movement writers found a common platform to express themselves. Mandrake, an Oxford based magazine edited by Wain and Bayers, brought out poems by the Movement writers. The Movement came into limelight through media as well. John Lehman edited a series of radio broadcasts under the title

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

“New Soundings” on the BBC radio between March 1952 and 1953. Poems by several new writers like Davie, Gunn, Holloway, Jennings and Wain reached the masses through this programme. It was an unusual phenomenon as in the past media was never used in this manner. Further the BBC Radio broadcasted a similar programme called First Reading prepared by a leading Movement writer, John Wain. The programme, as Morrison records, ── “has been seen as a crucial break through for the Movement writers” (Morrison, 42).

5. The Movement Poets: The nine Movement poets are Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, John Wain, Robert Conquest, John Holloway Thom Gunn, D.J. Enright, Donald Davie and Elizabeth Jennings. These poets have no poetic program but their pronouncements on poets and poetry have an astounding similarity of viewpoint and attitude. At one time it might have been suggested that they shared certain qualities, yet every one of them has its own poetic character which results from his especial approach to his subjects.

Conquest's introduction asserted that their poetry was characterized by ‘rational structure and comprehensible language’ and ‘negative determination to avoid bad principles’. The poets were nominated ‘the New Augustans’ in appreciation of the achievement with which they used conventional verse forms and the logically discursive development typifying many of their poems. Their critics found their work rationally dry and limited in its habits of scholarly allusion, factors associated with the preponderance of university lecturers among the Movement poets. Blake Morrison's study The Movement (1980) identified F.R. Leavis, George Orwell, and William Empson as forerunners of various aspects of the poets' theory and practice. Davie's Purity of Diction in English Verse (1952) stated the critical assumptions underlying much of the group's poetry. Briefly alluding to the Movement in the introduction to his Oxford Book of Contemporary Verse (1980), which contains work by six of the group, Enright later noted ‘the nonchalance with which, after a brief period of cohesiveness, its members went their separate ways’; the Movement had, however, a decisive influence on poetry in English for many years.

6. The Debate over the existence of the group: The Movement, as such, was a ‘loosely connected group’ (King, 3) with no official foundation. This group identity has been widely debated. It has frequently been challenged not only by critics but also by writers themselves. Thus the readers are left to speculate and settle on whether the writers really constituted a group, whether there were common objectives and a common platform for the writers. Some commentators have dismissed the Movement as a mere journalistic invention. The Movement poets themselves often tended to be apprehensive about the identity of their disposition as a group. They were probably not ready to reduce their individuality to a common identity. Thus, many of them rejected their group identity in favor of recognition as individual literary artists. Controversies Regarding the Movement by the Critics: Anthony Thwaite calls the Movement ‘a complex phenomenon’ and raises a question ——“Was it a true literary beginning in the 1950s or an invocation by journalists?” (Thwaite, 40) Jeff Nuttal describes it a ‘gigantic confidence trick. Howard Sergeant calls the Movement an ‘extremely well-mannered, not to say well-established, publicity campaign’ (Morrison,3).

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

In spite of the attempts to degrade the Movement and to challenge its existence, some major critics and writers like Jerry Bradley & Blake Morrison’s view, show that the Movement identity of the poets is not as arbitrary as it is often thought to be. In his book The Movement: English Poetry and Fiction of the1950s Blake Morrison asserts not only that the Movement existed but that it was a literary group of considerable importance (Morrison, 60). Disclaimers by the Movement Poets: The Movement poets themselves expressed varied opinions about the Movement and their connections to it. Larkin, for instance, found ‘no sense at all’ (Hamilton, 69) in belonging to a movement. In an essay written in 1950 Kingsley Amis referred to the Movement as the ‘phantom movement’ (Morrison, 4). Playing ignorance about the existence of the Movement and his association with it Thom Gunn said ── “I found I was in it before I knew it existed and I have a certain suspicion that it does not exist” (Gunn, 661). D.J. Enright, another eminent Movement poet, also shared the same view when he said, ──“I don’t think there was a movement back to those days, or, if there was, I don’t know about it” (Morrison, 4). Elizabeth Jennings was similarly inclined to play down the idea of the Movement among a particular generation of postwar poets, ── “They may have common aims- but this is something very different from that deliberate practice and promulgation of shared views which a true literary movement implies.” Further she argues that ‘it is the journalists, not the poets themselves, who have created the poetic movements of the Movements.’ (Jennings, 10) Only Davie has acknowledged the Movement’s existence and his participation in it, but even he has belittled its importance: his 1959 essay Remembering the Movement contains some of the most of the informed and incisive criticism. These views and comments cannot be vaguely dismissed but must be treated with skepticism. A distaste for sensational journalism can be detected in the Movement’s critics, a narrow view is taken by some in a sense that the only bonafide movement is one in which all poets gather and others seem symptomatic of dislike of being associated with any group activity. Most of the disavowals were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s, at a time when the writers were beginning to move in different directions and wanted their individual talents to be recognized. Movement poets seem sometimes to be writing against their natural impulse in order to adhere to the group principles and they have also given their consent to it. There were certain contradictions too but at least for a time being there was considerable agreement and interaction that was developed by the Movement consensus. Therefore the Movement cannot be considered as a mere journalistic construction or as an agreed fiction.

7. Dispersal of the Group: After the publication of the New Lines in 1954 the group affinity began to dissolve. New Lines was the climax. Then the lines diverged. They united for a common cause. In 1957 John Wain wrote ─ “The revolt is now over. Its work is done” (Wain, 339). The Movement was directly connected with the universities. It originated and flourished on the university campus. After 1956 all the Movement Poets were not associated with universities. John Wain and Amis gave up teaching. Larkin and Jennings served as Librarians so they too, could not be called academic. The Movement ceased to be provincial. Apart from Larkin who maintained the image of a provincial recluse, other Movement writers migrated either abroad or to metropolis other than London.

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The literary scene in England also changed. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath struck a different note in poetry. The publication of Hughes’ first volume of poems The Hawk in the Rain in 1957 was a remarkable shift from the Movement. The poems in The Hawk in the Rain are marked by ruggedness and are full of romantic energy which the Movement rejected. A. Alvarez published an anthology called The New Poetry which had several poems by Ted Hughes. In the introduction to this anthology Alvarez indirectly attacked the polite urbanity of the Movement poetry.—— “Influenced profoundly by forces which have nothing to do with gentility, decency or politeness…They are forces of disintegration which destroy old standards of civilization. The public faces are those of two world wars and the threat of nuclear war (Alvarez, 26). Thus after 1956 it was difficult to associate even the Movement writers with the Movement. The writers who were initially at universities as undergraduates shared views, then after seemed to differ from one another in their attitude to poetry. Davie for instance insisted on taking poetry seriously as a profession. Larkin, on the other, rejected Davie’s stand; for him it was a hobby. He argued that poetry should be a spare time activity; he has to manage poetry writing along with other spare time activities like social life, reading, letter writing and mending socks. The Movement gradually lost its recognition. Its associates won fame as individual literary artists. However, the fact remains that the Movement played a very important role in the making of these writers. It is a significant phase in the history of poetry as well. The Movement poetry is a departure from modernist themes and techniques is a starting point of a shift towards Postmodernism. It was an indication that the transition had begun. 8. Major Traits of the Movement Poetry: Simple Themes and Subject Matter: The subject matter of the Movement poem is common human experience. It has little to do with the myth poetic tendency of the Modernists. As against the myth poetic view of poetry, Larkin speaks of every poem as containing its freshly created universe. The experience of poetry is the unique experience of the here and now and therefore can have no relation to “tradition” in Eliot’s sense or “a common myth kitty.” Davie implies that poetry must be born of personal experience and this we can accept with the Movementeers. Poetry for them cannot be born from other poems and Larkin from this point of view is perfectly right in deploring “casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets”, and so in Kingsley Amis when he says ── “Nobody wants any more poems about philosophers or paintings or novelists or art galleries or mythology or foreign cities or other poems or poets” (Amis, 17-18). Bernard Bergonzi has noted the changes in the poetic style of the Movement poets and related these changes to the contemporary national temper: The Movement poets wrote their poems on simple subject and in Straight- forward manner, their ordinariness is due to the loss of Empire, the abandonment of nuclear arms, Seuz, the consequences o 1944 Education act, the creation of National Health Service, the political Tedium induced by large and growing similarities between the two major Poetries.”( Bergonzi,3). Englandism and Provincialism The Movement Poets cultivated Englandism, provincialism, regionalism and Londonism. Further when Philip Larkin was asked if he read foreign poetry, he answered in the negative. His poetry is provincial because of his concern and love for England. Amis also favored the same He observed that ── “I used to be lumped into the Movement of the 1950s. No doubt, I have or had, something in common with some other poets lumped into”(Amis, 45). Davie wrote several articles propagating provincialism and insularity.

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Davie defended English culture and civilization as the poetic subject in his essay England as a Poetic Subject. He also liked the insularity of Larkin. According to him —— “contemporary England is a rich field of poetic subject.” He further opines that contemporary conditions for the poetic subject were different from those of the past. He says: “This is the poet who wants to see his writing not any longer as a historical, an ethical or a social activity but a metaphysical and ultimately, yes, a religious activity. Davie wants to write poems that express and nourish elation. Concern with the reader: The modernists were unattached to the readers and hence were isolationists. The novelists, dramatists and critics also did not care for the readers. In this reference Cleanth Brooks wrote: ——“Eliot’s World is not a beautiful world. It is in large part an urban world where one hears Rattling plates in basement kitchen’s where with morning hands raise” dingy shades/ In a Thousand furnished rooms” where the winter evening settles down/ with smell of steaks of withered leaves about your feet/ And newspapers from vacant lots”(Brooks, 34). It is a world that is not only bored but neurasthenic. In contrast to the modernists the Movement poets feel a keen attachment to their readers. All most all poets preferred ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ of the Modernists and ‘they’ of the sociological approach of the poets of the thirties. Their characters in poetry, dramas and all works of art were common people keeping in mind the audience. “We” implies a universal spokesman ship. They use “we” very consistently to capture the attention of the reader in contrast with those of the 1930s who use “you,” M.L. Rosenthal appreciates the Movement writers for an implication of universal spokesman ship. The Element of Time The Movement Poetry portrays the element of time and its effect on life. They employ time as the most significant concept. They deal with time in different ways in contrast with the Modernist poets.

No War and Politics: As the members of the group were part of the post – war generation they did not write about the war. There were few references to bomb and war. As a reaction against the disruption of the war, the members of the group felt the need for order, which they tried to propagate by the use of —— “regular and disciplined verse forms” (Morrison, 89) As an alternative to the extremes of the Right and Left, the members of the group decided not to get too much involved in political themes. Enright for instance was not in favor of political agitation in Britain and, as Holloway put it, ——“the Movement’s stand became a stand against having a political stand”(Morrison, 96). It was the notion of neutrality which was seen as the appropriate one.

Use of Colloquial Language: The Movement poets employ colloquial language. As David Timms says “the same language.” Holloway, Larkin, Amis, Enright and Davie use the same colloquial language and frequent use of defensive asides in their poems. The Movement poetry helps the reader to understand its subject by virtue of its clarity, simplicity and rational meaning. Syntax: The significant point to be noted regarding Movement diction is its control of strict economy in the use of metaphor. A poem is not to be a proposition of metaphors or images but metaphor is to be subsumed under the rational structure of the poem. Strength in poetry is a close and compact syntax. The Movement’s use of syntax is totally opposed to the symbolist use of it. The strength of Movement verse

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lies in its compactness and closeness of expression which are products of an appropriate handling of syntax. Amis talked about the desire to be lucid if nothing else, and a liking for strict and a fairly simple verse form. In Articulate Energy Davie said: ——“Systems of syntax are part of the heritable property of past civilization, and to hold firm to them is to be traditional in the best and most important sense( Davie,44 ).

The Pleasure Principle: Poetry is an artifact and a communiqué. It is both “made” and something “said”. In its aspect as a made thing it generates pleasure which is its primary function. According to Larkin the pleasure seeking audience for poetry has deserted poetry and other forms of entertainment. One reason for this is t he obscurity of much Symbolist poetry. In “The Pleasure Principle”, Larkin says that the reader is repeatedly “confronted with pieces that cannot be understood without reference beyond their own limits or who’s contended insipidity argues that their authors are merely reminding themselves of what they know already, rather than re-creating it for the third party. The reader seems no longer present in the poets mind. Robert Conquest also considers this business of harnessing poetry to the uses of culture in the abstract as ridiculous (Conquest,114) Poetry must give pleasure, and Larkin has said that his aim is simply to keep the old man away from the pub and the child from its television set, by giving them pleasure through poetry. Larkin asserts that “at bottom poetry, like all art is inextricably bound up with giving pleasure”(Larkin, 28). Donald Davie also agrees that the primary function of poetry is to give pleasure.

The Social Function of Poetry: The Movementeers clearly believed that a poem has a larger function to perform than merely giving pleasure. This function is a social function. A poem which is a statement partakes of a nature of discourse. This implied a changed view of the nature of the poet. Abduction was being made in keeping with the extengencies of post-war, post-India, Welfare State conditions. When a poem is a discourse the poet is a man speaking to man. This is a modest ideal in comparison with the Symbolist view of him as bard and seer, experiencing vatic visions which he tries to evoke for the less fortunate. The poet is both a maker and the sayer – a man speaking to men, affected by and affecting his society. He is of his times and like Thomas Hardy bound by quotidian reality and the world of historical contingency, the world of specific places at specific times. He is dominated by time, by history, and cannot transcend the linear unrolling of it.

Diction: The Movement poets do not experiment but are pleased to follow the rules of English which is best illustrated in their use of diction. The Movement poet makes a selection from language and the effect is one of words continually thrusting at the poem seeking admittance, but being fended off. This can be achieved by great control, by a sense of decorum, judgment and unerring taste. They have the usages of conversation and the poems have the conversational ease which a poet who is constantly seeking to approximate to the spoken tongue will have. Again the attempt of the Movement was to purify the “language of the tribe” and therefore there is chastity in the diction. The total effect is of a valuable urbanity, a civilized moderation and elegance. These are the qualities which a good prose possesses, and much Movement diction is prosaic. An example of these qualities would be Donald Davies’s poem The Fountain: —— “Feathers up fast, steeples, and then in clods/ Thuds into its first basin; thence as surf/ Smokes up and hangs; irregularly slops/ Into its second, tattered like a shawl,/There, chill as rain, stipples a danker green,/ Where urgent tritons lob their heavy jets” (Davie, 12).

The Global Journal of Literary Studies I Volume II, Issue I I February 2016 ISSN : 2395 4817

The poet brings off his effects by a tactful restraint in his use of words. The poem moves forward because of the large amount of energetic verbs it has “thuds”, “smokes”, “hangs”, “stipples”, “lobs” and so on. Even a word like “feather” which is a noun is converted into a verb “feathers” which is an Augustan technique. Diction as employed by the Movement poets thus purifies the language while at the same time gives pleasure to the reader. Movement diction does not extend the range of language. It goes over already trodden ground, purifying and enlivening it. This humble purpose is steady with the Movement’s overall attitude of avoiding excess or adopting a pompous rhetorical tone. As Morrison notes: ── “Movement poetic practice is based on certain general principles about the origin, nature and function of poetry. These in term bespeak a different view of the poet—the poet as citizen concerned with social issues and politics. Poetry not only is made thing, it is a said thing and it is discourse” (Morrison, 78)

Anti Romanticism: The reactionary mood of the Movement is not limited to Modernist and the poets of the thirties but similar attitude is expressed towards the poetry of the forties also. These poets gave a strong expression to their emotions without being bothered about the reading public. No subject or syntax was forbidden for them. They wrote with uncontrolled energy. Robert Conquest attacked Dylan Thomas and other poets of the forties and declared that these poets that these poets - “were encouraged to regard their task simply as one of making an arrangement of image of sex and violence tapped straight from the unconscious , or to evoke without comment the naiveté’s and nostalgias of childhood”( Conquest,6 ). Typical Movement Poetry represses and ridicules sentimentality and feeling which formed the bulk of neo- romantic poetry. Movement poetry is a “model of restraint; the tightness of its form enacts the speakers’ evocain of controlled meaning. In place of welsh howl comes English stiff upper lip. They reacted against what Harold Bloom said ── ‘clear imaginative space for them.’ Unromantic Treatment of Childhood: The treatment of childhood is another typical point of contrast between the neo- romantics and the Movement poets. Larkin’s I Remember; I Remember revises Thomas’ Fern Hill. Here there is unsentimental treatment of childhood. Larkin does not paint a rosy picture of childhood nor does he glamorize it. Davie in a similar strain wrote A Baptist Childhood where he rejected Thomas’ joyful and heedless ways and said —— “when some were happy as the grass was green I was as happy as a glass was dark”(Davie, 232). There is rejection of romantic hero. Instead of heroic figure they make use of what could be called a “non-hero”. The members of the group wanted to stress the fact that —— “in a Welfare State democracy everyone was of equal importance, that everyone had an equally vital part to play” (Morrison, 172).They did not want their heroes to rebel, but to be an example of serving the community. The poet should not be an exception either. This can also be seen as a reaction against the Romantic belief in the poet as a special human being.

Irony, Satire, Wit and Humor: Although Conquest claimed that this nine poets shared —— ‘little more than negative determination to avoid bad principles’ it was clear that a typical Movement poem combined formal discipline and intellectual lucidity with an ironic and often mildly disaffected view of contemporary life. It was a redeeming feature of Larkin’s work. They save his poetry from vapidity and dreariness.

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Anti –Modernism: What particularly brings the Movement in conflict with modernist philosophy and poetics is the fact that they do not agree to the view of Eliot and Pound who believe that the poet should not address a small and intelligent audience rather than a large and intelligent one. Larkin the representative Movement poet talks about the purpose of writing poetry in the interview with the Paris Review, “ well you write for everybody or nobody will listen to you” (Larkin, 39) His basic quarrel is with the poetic rhetoric. He dislikes obscurity, literary allusions, myth kitty and symbolic complexity of the modern poets. Larkin and Amis were influenced by their tutor Gavin Bone at Oxford and consequently developed their interest in clarity, simplicity and intelligibility which are primary characteristics of Movement writings in contrast with those of Modernist writings.

9. Conclusion Though the skeptics dismissed the Movement as ephemeral yet what it achieved and stood for survive to this day. It has survived not because the historians have allocated a footnote, or because certain current practitioners are what we would call Movement like in their tone of voice or preference for regular rhyme and metre but because Larkin and Amis in particular have left us with an indispensible body of literature- indispensable to our pleasure and understanding of the works, but indispensable too in realism, honesty and even courage. To borrow the lines from Larkin’s poem To the Sea —— “Still going on, all of it, still going on!” ( Larkin, 34).Larkin is the greatest English poet of the second half of the 20th century and Amis the greatest comic novelist; Davie is the outstanding critic of the generation. Gunn, Davie and Enright are all in their different ways considerable poets. But it is more than the matter of individual talent which transcend and transgresses the work of literary Movement with which it is associated. The Movement Poetry, by distancing itself from the previous poetic movements of the 20th Century created for itself a new politics. It is therefore not an extension of various extensions of early nineteenth century romanticism. The newness of the Movement poetics lay in the fact that certain poetic methods and modes which had fallen into void after the Romantic Movement were revived. This revival was urgently required, so the Movement poets thought re-establishing those methods and means because only by doing so English poetry could catch the rhythms of life of the post-second world war England. Much had to be ridiculed in the contemporary life and by ridiculing the surviving vestiges of romanticism English poetry could recover its lost tradition. The Movement also matters because its ideas about love, death, sex, marriage, God, gender, politics and art are more fraught, complex and open to interpretation than they have been given credit for. The Movement is important to recent literary history because in the 1950 the writers associated to it re- imagined and promoted discourses of national identity in order to make of necessity the reduced role of Britain in world politics a virtue. This involved complex, sometimes contradictory and provisional adaptations of an argument that set an English poetry and a tradition of Englishness in poetry over and against cosmopolitan Modernisms identified as non-native- an opposition that is the root of divisions in British poetry that continue to influence the production and critical evaluation of poetry in present. It is possible to see Modernist and Anti-Modernist discourses in post-war England as existing in a symbiotic relationship but much focus on them can leave important middle ground neglected. The questions the Movement raised about Modernism are among the most important literary legacies of the 1950s.

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Bergonzi, Bernard. Donald Davie, Larkin and the State of England Contemporary Literature Vol.18 (1977), p, 347

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