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Lines on a young lady’s photo album. Philip Larkin. Track 1 on The Less Deceived, 1955. Producer. Philip Larkin. This poem deals with the theme of memory and the power of the past. The speaker ...
Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album. February 2005 Nomination: Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album [18 September 1953. From The Less Deceived] Since Poem of the Month has been going for so long now it is no surprise that most of the ‘best’ and best-known pieces have been. Read More ».
Nov 5, 2022 · The title “Lines on a Young Lady’s Photograph Album” introduces the mocking tone right from the start, with its recollection of poems from a previous age with similar titles but which took ...
- John Welford
To mourn (without a chance of consequence) You, balanced on a bike against a fence; To wonder if you’d spot the theft. Of this one of you bathing; to condense, In short, a past that no one now ...
- Stanza One
- Stanza Two
- Stanza Three
- Stanza Four
- Stanza Five
- Stanza Six
- Stanza Seven
- Stanza Eight
- Stanza Nine
In the first stanza of ‘Lines On A Young Lady’s Photograph Album’the speaker begins by directly addressing his intended listener. This person is the “lady” named in the title of the poem. She has finally “yielded” her “album” to him. She opened it, for a reason he doesn’t seem to understand, and dedicated herself to studying it. The temptation of t...
His eye moves from image to image, taking in all the different poses his listener is striking. There are ones from her youth in which she’s wearing pigtails. There’s another where she’s holding a cat. These images go from nostalgic to romantic. It is clear that he is idealizing this photos. They are to him perfect moments in this person’s past. Thi...
In the next set of five lines, the speaker notes that these images of the listener are testing his control. They “strike” at it, trying (or so it seems to him) to break him down. A few of the older photos draw his attention and provoke a different emotional response. He sees that there were a number of “disquieting” or disconcerting “chaps” or youn...
In the fourth line, he expresses his distress over the wonders and disappointments inherent to the art of photography. It is an “art” like no other. It can be given so much, but leave equal amounts, if not more, to the imagination. Photography is easily able to record “dull days” in all their dullness. The art also equally captures “hold-it” poses ...
On the less satisfying side of the equation, photography is also able to obscure the real. Sometimes it shows something to be one way when it definitely wasn’t and isn’t. The speaker gives the example of a “disinclined” cat and a “doubled” chin. In line three the speaker directs his words to the listener’s own chin. In reality, it is not doubled, i...
He begins the sixth stanza by exclaiming over how “empirically true” the photos make her life seem. There, in his hands, is the evidence of all the events she has told him about and the things he’s learned about her. The speaker wonders why these images impact his heart so deeply in the following lines. At first, it seems like the whole image is im...
The speaker continues to philosophize on the past and what it means to be a part, but also not a part of it. One is excluded from another’s past moments. But, the past is also separate. Due to its inability to become the present, one is able to move on. It is not going to return with a new agency and “call on us to justify / Our grief.” Whatever ha...
In the eighth stanza, the speaker concludes the thought he began in the seventh. He is experiencing pain over the photo album. He feels himself drawing closer to the listener but at the same time, there are vast gaps from picture to picture and the space between his eye and the page. There is a lot of missing information. Therefore, the speaker sta...
In the final stanza of ‘Lines On A Young Lady’s Photograph Album’the speaker expresses his deepest regret while looking over the photos. After initially pleasing him to no end, they bring him into a solemn state. He knows the past she lived, “no one now can share.” It is locked away from him, or from anyone else she might share her future with. The...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
Lines On A Young Lady's Photograph Album. At last you yielded up the album, which Once open, sent me distracted. All your ages Matt and glossy on the thick black pages! Too much confectionery, too rich: I choke on such nutritious images.
Lines.. is anti literary, rejection to modernism, title suggests literary like Wordsworth poems. 9 Stanzas of quintains, each has a regular rhyme scheme. Free flowing monologue under-pinned by iambic pentameter. Enjambement and Ceaure create illusion of artlessness. At last you yielded up the album, which.
