For Sidney Bechet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEOee

OtXOKU

What is the poem about?

• Larkin writes about the Jazz composer Sidney Bechet who he was a big fan of. • In the poem New Orleans (birth place of jazz) is described, filled with happy people and music. • There is a positive reflection of memories, reminded by music, about love and happy times.

The Structure

• Larkin makes the poem

have a jazz beat, and the rhyme

scheme and stanza scheme is

unusual and unexpected like a

jazz song.

• The poem is an apostrophe

because Larkin talks to

someone as though they were

present.

The First Stanza

• In the first stanza the

music is described with the ‘shakes

like New Orleans reflect in the water’.

This simile is split over two lines,

the word ‘shakes’ put at the

end to ripple onto the next line. There

is a theme of water in this stanza.

• The poem is set up as a cause

and effect, how the music causes

people to imagine different places.

The Second Stanza

• The first scenario of love and beauty is described in the second stanza. • ‘Balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles’ are romantic and pretty features. A quadrille is a square dance for couples. • Everyone is ‘making love’ and ‘going shares’ which means taking it easy. This is a calm, relaxed and fun atmosphere.

The Third Stanza

• The third stanza is about

the darker side of New Orleans.

‘Storyville’ is the red-light district.

• Larkin describes the ‘sporting-house girls’ (prostitutes)

as ‘like circus tigers’. Larkin places women in

a negative, degrading view that’s quite sexist. He

compares the ‘girls’ as animals, however they

are tamed because they are being controlled.

Before this the ‘tigers’ were wild and

dangerous.

• Larkin refers to the bible that states ‘who

can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far

above rubies’.

• If women were priced above rubies this could

mean that they were expensive.

The Fourth Stanza

• In this stanza Larkin describes the wannabes, that sit in the audience. ‘Manques’ are would-be scholars. The word also meaning ‘to lack’ in French, the scholars unfulfilled of their dreams. • Larkin uses a simile ‘like old plaids’ to describe the audience. Plaids could mean they are interwoven and engrossed into the music as its close to them.

The Fifth Stanza

• This stanza describes

how music affects Larkin himself.

He uses the pronouns ‘me’ and ‘’my’.

• The music makes him feel the way

love is said to make people feel.

However this could be a paradox

because he thinks he loves music,

but doesn’t know because

he’s never loved.

• ‘Like an enormous yes’ is a

caesura, this making an emphasise

on Larkin’s positive view.

The Sixth Stanza

• Larkin says that music understands him, and speaks to him like a person; it is the ‘natural noise of good’. • ‘Long-haired grief and scored pity’, implies that when Larkin listens to music he forgets his problems. This relates to the African Americans, how jazz music was based on their music and ‘scored pity’ is a pun on a musical score, referring to the pity felt when listening to this genre.

Comparison – Love Songs In Age

• Larkin wrote the poem about an elderly widow who finds the sheet music of some songs she used to play when she was young, and the cello plays a version of Bechet’s blues as a nostalgic song making her relive memories. • Both poems are about music and how they relate to memories and love.

Comparison – An Arundel Tomb

• In this poem Larkin has

a positive view on love and life, with

a happier attitude compared to his

usual themes.

• Love lasts through time,

whether this be as a sculptural

tomb or in the form of music.