Talking in Bed

“Talking in Bed” is a lyric poem by English post-World War II poet Philip Larkin, published in Larkin’s collection, The Whitsun Weddings, in 1964. Larkin began writing the poem in September 1959; he went through many drafts before finishing the poem in August 1960. Thematically, this pessimistic poem is typical of Larkin’s work, which often concerns the difficulties of love. In the poem, two people are unable to maintain a close relationship in which they are able to communicate honestly, revealing that the love they once had for each other has died. The poem also contains traditional elements like rhyme and meter that are typical of Larkin’s work. The plain language of “Talking in Bed” reveals Larkin’s belief that poetry should be intelligible to everyone.

Poet Biography

England’s most popular poet of the second half of the twentieth century, Philip Larkin was born on August 9, 1922, in Coventry, Warwickshire, in the English Midlands. He was the son of Sydney Larkin, who was the Coventry city treasurer, and Eva Larkin. Philip had one sister, Catherine, who was ten years older than him. When he was a boy, Larkin’s father encouraged him to read English poetry and novels, and he also inspired in Larkin a lifelong interest in jazz. In 1940, during World War II, Larkin entered St. John’s College, Oxford, graduating with a degree in English in 1943. He was exempt from military service because of poor eyesight, so he did not participate in the World War II efforts as a soldier. After graduation from Oxford, Larkin became the librarian of a small public library in Wellington, Shropshire. He remained a librarian all his life.

In 1945, Larkin’s first collection of poetry, The North Ship, was published. Larkin had not yet found his distinctive poetic voice, and the influence of some of the leading poets of the day, such as W. B. Yeats, W. H. Auden, and Dylan Thomas, is present in these works. In the same year, Larkin became assistant librarian at University College, Leicester, and his novel, Jill, was published. A second novel, A Girl in Winter, followed two years later. At that stage in his life, Larkin regarded himself more as a novelist than a poet, although he never finished another novel.

Larkin took up a third job as a librarian in 1950, when he became a sub librarian at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1951, he arranged for the printing of his collection of twenty poems, titled XX Poems, at his own expense. The book received almost no acknowledgement from the literary world.

Success came to Larkin in 1955 with the publication of his poetry collection titled The Less Deceived, which was selected as a book of the year by the Times Literary Supplement. In the same year, Larkin took up a position as librarian of the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull in northeastern England. He would remain the librarian at Hull for the rest of his life.

In 1961, Larkin put his enthusiasm and knowledge of jazz to good use when he began reviewing jazz for the Daily Telegraph, which he continued to do until 1971. In 1964, his collection of poetry titled The Whitsun Weddings, which includes “Talking in Bed,” was published. It became Larkin’s most celebrated book, appealing to both lovers of poetry and new or less familiar readers of poetry. People appeared to recognize that there was something quintessentially English about Larkin’s work, a kind of resigned pessimism that captured the national mood of the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1965, Larkin received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the Arts.

In 1973, Larkin edited The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. His choice of poems reflects his own tastes. He championed the poetry of Thomas Hardy, including twenty-seven Hardy poems in the collection, while including only nine poems by T. S. Eliot. In all, Larkin chose 207 poets for the collection, which was extremely controversial as ordinary lovers of poetry liked it more than the academic reviewers of the collection.

In 1974, the publication of another volume of poetry, High Windows, cemented Larkin’s popularity as a poet. Larkin continued to write and publish poems in the mid- and late 1970s, including the famous “Aubade,” but High Windows proved to be his last major publication. In 1984, he declined an invitation to become Poet Laureate following the death of John Betjeman. Larkin died of cancer on December 2, 1985, in Hull, at the age of sixty-three. His Collected Poems was published in 1988.

Poem Text

Larkin, Philip. “Talking in Bed.” 1964. Genius.com.

Summary

The poem is about the challenges of maintaining honest, open communication in a love relationship. The first tercet (three lines) presents the reader with an image of two people lying together in bed. The speaker comments that such a situation ought to make it easy for a couple to communicate honestly with each other. The second tercet tells a different story, however, as the couple choose silence over conversation. Outside the walls of the bedroom, the speaker of the poem notes it is windy and clouds move across the sky. The third tercet continues the description of the world outside the couple’s room, noting towns in the distance, shrouded in darkness. The speaker then notes that this wider environment is indifferent to what happens to people. The speaker observes that no explanation exists for the fact that even when two people are very close, talking in a truthful and loving way is difficult.