I can’t understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.
Meaning of the quote
This quote is saying that poetry is a personal and private thing, like the way you sleep with your partner. Just like you don't need to explain how you sleep with your wife, the poet doesn't think you should have to explain how you write poems. The poet finds it strange when people go around universities trying to explain their creative process, as poetry is something that comes from within and is not easily put into words.
About Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin was an acclaimed English poet, novelist, and librarian who published several influential collections of poetry, including ‘The Less Deceived’ and ‘The Whitsun Weddings’. Despite his reserved public persona, Larkin’s work is renowned for its honest and poignant reflections on everyday life, relationships, and the human experience.
More quotes from Philip Larkin
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any-after all, most people are unhappy, don’t you think?
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
You can’t put off being young until you retire.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
Life has a practice of living you, if you don’t live it.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
In everyone there sleeps. A sense of life lived according to love. To some it means the difference they could make. By loving others, but across most it sweeps. As all they might have done had they been loved. That nothing cures.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
They say eyes clear with age.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
I can’t understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
I wouldn’t mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.
English writer, jazz critic and librarian (1922-1985)