Poetry of Departures is a lyric poem by the famous Philip Larkin. Just as many other Larkin’s poems, Poetry of Departures contains some implications for fatalism, irreversibility, and loss. The poem is based on an opposition between two different concepts: a familiar and stable life and a new, reformed life. Even though the position that the author takes in his opposition can be defined from the very first stanza, it is still important to analyze the words that he uses to describe each of the concepts for it is the dictation that reveals the true underpinning of Larkin’s position.

To begin with, it is necessary to determine which concepts or ways of living Larkin contrasts in order to examine the poem’s dictation. In this regard, a close look at Poetry of Departures shows that the two ways of living that are opposed to each other are the familiar and the unknown. Thus, Larkin intensively juxtaposes stability versus reform and the reader easily guesses that the author leans towards the latter. In this regard, it is particularly interesting to analyze the words that Larkin chooses to describe the opposed concepts for his dictation is very ambiguous. If we rely completely on the semantic value of the words, we should need to conclude that Larkin supports the former concept, i.e. the familiar life or the stability.

Thus, he actively uses the epithets “good” and “perfect” speaking about the familiar home life (Larkin, n.d.). In the meantime, the reader easily perceives that the adjectives that the author uses are misleading and that it is the verb that conveys his true feelings. For example, the positive epithets “good” and “perfect” are accompanied by strongly negative verbs such as “hate” and “detest.” The verbs that Larkin chooses to describe the familiar life symbolize extremities which is why their negative effect overweighs the positive connotations of the epithets.

On the contrary, when Larkin describes the reform or the new life, the verbs he chooses are all positive and, what is more, they possess some active impulse: “clear off,” “approve.” “create,” etc. (Larkin, n.d.). In such a manner, he does not simply depict the traditional opposition between good and bad, new and old or interesting and boring. Instead, he tries to visualize a contrast between passiveness (however positive it can be) and activeness (however ambiguous it can be). By the end of the poem, Larkin reveals that his dilemma is not about choosing between good and bad life but about deciding to stay or to go.

To a certain extent, this is the choice between authentic and false, natural and artificial. The word “artificial” is intentionally used close to the word “perfect” in order to expose the falsehood of the seeming perfection of the familiar life which the author despises for its outward orderliness. In this regard, it can be supposed that the word “artificial” is intentionally included in the closing part of the poem because it discords strongly the word “elemental” used in the very first stanza. In such a manner, Larkin’s Poetry of Departures obtains a cyclic structure so that the first lines correlate with the last ones.

To summarize, it can be concluded that dictation plays an important role in Poetry of Departures – Larkin skillfully plays with the vocabulary putting together the words with positive and negative connotations in order to add more tension to his poem. The use of seemingly incompatible words helps him to convey the entire complexity of the described situation: the familiar life is generally good but it is too artificial to be tolerated. With Poetry of Departures, Larkin demonstrates how a talentedly selected vocabulary can create an outstanding poem basing on a very simple, almost primitive, plot.