Reference Back - Philip Larkin Revision Guide

Student Revision Guide
This Revision Guide offers 7 clear sections: Overview; Form and Structure; Close Analysis; Key Themes; Context; Critical Perspectives; Study Questions and Extension Activities.
The Close Analysis section follows three stanzas: the mother’s passing remark from the unsatisfactory hall as the speaker plays record after record on a visit home; the jazz recording made the year after he was born, which forms a sudden bridge between her unsatisfactory age and his unsatisfactory prime; and the closing reflection on the long perspectives that link us to our losses. Form and Structure examines the move from anecdote to general statement, and from I and you to we. Context covers Larkin’s relationship with his mother, his love of jazz, and the poem’s place in The Whitsun Weddings (1964). Critical Perspectives asks whether the closing lines offer consolation or a harder recognition of what can never be kept.

Quotation Quilt
A selection of key quotations from ‘Reference Back’, arranged to support the themes and concepts an essay on this poem is most likely to need.
Quotations are grouped by the unsatisfactory hall, room, age and prime; wasting time at home; the jazz recording and the pre-electric horn; the sudden bridge between mother and son; time as our element; and the long perspectives that show us what we have as it once was.