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“Poetry of Departures” Introduction
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Philip Larkin published "Poetry of Departures" in his 1955 collection The Less Deceived. With characteristic humor and cynicism, the poem dismisses the fantasy of chucking it all and starting a new life somewhere else. The speaker finds this idea inauthentic and pretentious, preferring to live the mundane, steady life they already know, even with its "reprehensibly perfect" normality. This poem, like so many of Larkin's, embraces everyday life for better and for worse.
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“Poetry of Departures” Summary
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Every now and then someone tells a story they've heard from someone else (who also didn't hear it directly from the source). This story sounds like it's commemorating someone who died, except that it describes someone who decided to just chuck it all and leave their life behind. The person tells the story in a way that implies you should be impressed by this daring, soul-cleansing, earth-shattering action.
And that person isn't necessarily wrong. Everyone resents their own lives and feels like they're trapped in the homes they've created. I hate my own room, for example, which is filled with a bunch of useless stuff I picked out myself like good books and a nice bed. I hate my neat and tidy life.
So when I hear that someone just got up and left everyone behind, it makes me feel a tinge of excitement—like when I read a sexy passage in a book in which a woman undresses, or when a character gets his revenge on the bad guy. Then I think, surely I could leave it all behind too? This thought, in a way, focuses my mind, making me clear-sighted and willing to work hard.
Yes, I could depart today—stroll down the nut-covered country roads or stow away aboard a ship, my face growing nicely covered with stubble—if it didn't seem so inauthentic, like a totally contrived, backward move that turns life into just another object to be molded or cast aside. This new life would be just like my books and dishes: disgraceful in its perfection.
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“Poetry of Departures” Themes
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Everyday Life and the Fantasy of Escape
"Poetry of Departures" explores the tension between mundane life and the thrilling, yet deceptive, fantasy of suddenly leaving it all behind. The poem's speaker admits that there's something romantic about the idea of "just clear[ing] off": pulling up stakes at a moment's notice and starting a new, exciting life elsewhere. Yet the speaker ultimately chooses their tame life at home over the fantasy of starting fresh. Such fantasies, the poem concludes, are deeply "artificial"; life isn't an "object" that can be left behind, like books or dishware, and exchanged for something else.
The speaker feels that ordinary life is boring; most people, themselves included, arrange their lives in predictable ways. The speaker "detest[s]" their own room, with "Its specially-chosen junk," because it seems so dull and unadventurous. Their books and the bed are both "good," and their life is "in perfect order," but this doesn't mean their life is actually perfect. Rather, they make their life choices along simple and unsurprising lines, choosing the merely "good" over anything risky or chaotic. Moreover, the speaker claims that "We all hate home / And having to be there," implying that everyone feels dissatisfied with their lives on some level.
Because their daily routines are dull, people fantasize about getting away: leaving everything behind, perhaps changing their identity, and starting an entirely new life. It's a thrilling thought, even to the poem's staid speaker. The speaker sometimes hears accounts of people who "chucked up everything / And just cleared off," though, notably, these accounts are "fifth-hand" rather than first-hand (i.e., they might be exaggerated or false).
These spontaneous "departures" get talked about as if they are by default "audacious, purifying, / [and] Elemental"—that is, as if they restore life to some purer, more exciting state. And the speaker concedes that it is exciting to imagine suddenly getting up, walking out the door, and never coming back. The idea makes the speaker feel "flushed and stirred" (physically thrilled). They can imagine how, if they did undertake such a "departure," they might "swagger the nut-strewn roads" (walk from town to town without a care in the world) or "Crouch in the fo'c'sle / Stubbly with goodness" (escape as a stowaway on some ship, their beard growing as if in rebellion against the drudgery of normal life).
But the speaker ultimately disapproves of this fantasy, declaring it "artificial." That is, it's self-deceiving to imagine you can outrun yourself or your life. Sudden "departure" would represent a "deliberate step backwards," an impossible attempt to undo the life one has already lived. Starting over would mean trying "to create an object" out of one's old life—to treat it as an item one can neatly cast aside, like "Books" or "china."
The ambiguous phrasing here might also imply that it's corny and self-deluding "to create an object" out of the new life: that is, shape it into something admired from afar (perhaps through "fifth-hand" anecdotes). Regardless, the lesson is the same: there's no escaping the boring, burdensome realities of life. Escape fantasies might be appealing on some level, but they're also invented (in short, they're "Poetry," as the title warns!).
The speaker thus opts to stick with the life they already lead. Flirting with the idea of starting over helps them "stay / Sober and industrious"—that is, focused on what they already have. This choice comes with a heavy dose of irony: the speaker's current life isn't anything special; it just has the slight advantage of being real. It may be "Reprehensibly perfect" (overly tame and tidy), but discarding it altogether would be its own kind of ridiculous, perfectionist gesture. The imagined, alternative lives are a pure fantasy, and a clichéd one at that.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-32
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Poetry of Departures”
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Lines 1-4
Sometimes you hear, ...
... just cleared off,The speaker begins by describing how "you"—that is, anyone—occasionally hear stories about someone running away to start a new life. This is the type of "departure" to which the poem's title refers.
From the poem's start, though, the speaker seems skeptical about the idea of suddenly chucking it all. For one thing, the speaker says that you never hear the story directly. That is, you never actually talk to someone who has actually departed from their old life. It's never even told second- or third-hand but rather "fifth-hand," casting doubt on the idea that anyone ever follows through with this fantasy of escaping and starting again. The further a story is from its actual source, the harder it is to trust it is true (a bit like the game of telephone).
The speaker compares this archetypal story to an "epitaph," a commemorative phrase of the kind normally found on tombstones. These "fifth-hand" stories, in a way, memorialize the person who has disappeared, treating the breakaway from employment, friends, family, and so on as so deep and permanent that it's as if that person has died. The point of the story is to make "you" marvel at how someone can just kill off their own life with such daring.
Notice how casually lines 3-4 describe this disappearance:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,Both "chucked up" and "cleared off" are colloquial British expressions, and both denote a kind of willing indifference. That's part of what's supposed to be so impressive about the story: the way people can dismiss their own lives as if they mean nothing. That heavy /uh/ assonance in "chucked up" makes this departure seem all the more sudden and abrupt.
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Lines 5-8
And always the ...
... Elemental move.
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Lines 9-11
And they are ...
... to be there: -
Lines 12-15
I detest my ...
... in perfect order: -
Lines 16-20
So to hear ...
... that you bastard; -
Lines 21-24
Surely I can, ...
... I'd go today, -
Lines 25-28
Yes, swagger the ...
... weren't so artificial, -
Lines 29-32
Such a deliberate ...
... Reprehensibly perfect.
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“Poetry of Departures” Symbols
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Specially-chosen junk
The various possessions the speaker mentions throughout the poem—"good books, the good bed"—symbolize the mundanity of the speaker's life. This life is "good" but not great, the possessions suggest; it's dull in its predictability and perfection.
The speaker calls these items "specially-chosen junk," mocking themselves for curating such a boring life. The speaker "chose" to be surrounded by items that, presumably, make them content, yet they're "junk" in the sense that they're shallow, familiar comforts that keep the speaker tied to a particular place. Possesions such as "books" and "China" are like weights, the poem implies, preventing people from being their true, swashbuckling selves. The idea of leaving all these things behind represents leaving one's perfectly curated life behind; "chuck[ing] up everything" represents a break with the past, a fresh start.
And yet, the speaker ultimately argues, that's not entirely true. These belongings might be boring, but they also represent an authentic life. These possessions at least speak to something real, rather than clichéd fantasy; they reflect the reality of someone's life as they've lived it thus far. Life goes with people—it's not something that can be simply packed up and left behind in a cupboard. Things like dishware, furniture, and clothes might be boring, but at least they don't pretend to be something they're not.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 12-14: “I detest my room, / Its specially-chosen junk, / The good books, the good bed,”
- Line 31: “Books; china;”
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“Poetry of Departures” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Asyndeton
Asyndeton adds to the poem's casual, conversational tone. The device first appears in lines 7-8:
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.The speaker is describing how people are expected to react to the idea of someone running away from it all. The lack of any conjunction here speeds up the list of adjectives, creating momentum and excitement. The device recreates the awed tone that tends to accompany these mythical "departure" stories.
The asyndeton in line 14 again mirrors the poem's content. Here, the speaker describes their "specially-chosen junk":
The good books, the good bed,
Placing each item on either side of a caesura, without any conjunction between them, creates a sense of balance and steadiness. The line is neatly divided into two equal halves (three words on each side), evoking the staid predictability of the speaker's everyday life.
The poem's final two lines feature more asyndeton:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.Now, the list feels less breathless and more boring. The speaker nonchalantly places "a life" right alongside "Books" and "china," the asyndeton not allowing for any hierarchical distinction between these things. This, in turn, reflects the speaker's point: that "departing" just turns life itself into another object, something no different from the carefully chosen books and dishware with which people fill their homes.
Where asyndeton appears in the poem:- Lines 7-8: “This audacious, purifying, / Elemental move.”
- Lines 12-13: “I detest my room, / Its specially-chosen junk,”
- Line 14: “The good books, the good bed,”
- Lines 25-27: “swagger the nut-strewn roads, / Crouch in the fo'c'sle / Stubbly with goodness,”
- Lines 31-32: “Books; china; a life / Reprehensibly perfect.”
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Enjambment
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Irony
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Rhetorical Question
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Simile
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“Poetry of Departures” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Fifth-hand
- Epitaph
- Chucked Up
- Cleared Off
- Audacious
- Elemental
- Flushed and stirred
- Sober and industrious
- Swagger
- Nut-strewn
- Fo'c'sle
- Stubbly
- Reprehensibly
Fifth-hand-
(Location in poem: Line 1: “Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,”)
A story told about someone five people removed from "you" (a joke riffing on "second-hand").
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Poetry of Departures”
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Form
"Poetry of Departures" consists of four octets, or eight-line stanzas.
The form provides one of the ways that the poem juxtaposes the two main ideas at stake: staying put in one's normal, everyday life vs. escaping it all and starting again. The stanzas are like little boxes or rooms (in fact, stanza means "room" in Italian), reflective of the supposedly restrictive nature of regular life. The poem's short lines seem to wrestle against this shape through enjambment and caesura. In two spots, the speaker's words actually break across two different stanzas, as though trying to escape the rigid confines of the poem:
So to hear it said
He walked out on the whole crowd
[...]
But I'd go today,
Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
There's a kind of push and pull going on, an attempt to break free that never quite succeeds.
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Meter
"Poetry of Departures" might look like it's written in free verse, but it actually uses a rough accentual meter: most (though not all) lines contain two or three stressed syllables, but a differing number of unstressed syllables. Here's the first stanza as an example:
Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand,
As epitaph:
He chucked up everything
And just cleared off,
And always the voice will sound
Certain you approve
This audacious, purifying,
Elemental move.This stanza, like the others, could be scanned in a few ways, but it's clear that the sounds of the poem aren't random. The poem sounds quite conversational yet has a subtle underlying pulse to it.
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Rhyme Scheme
Though the reader might not even notice it at first, there is a regular rhyme scheme at work throughout "Poetry of Departures": each stanza runs ABCBADCD. Most of the rhymes are decidedly slant, sharing nothing but some final consonance (as in "epitaph"/"off" or "fifth-hand"/"sound"). Still, there's a pattern at work in each stanza. Here's stanza 1 as an example:
[...] fifth-hand, A
[...] epitaph: B
[...] everything C
[...] off, B
[...] sound A
[...] approve D
[...] purifying, C
[...] move. DGiven how subtle the rhymes are, it's probably not until "approve"/"move" that the reader first recognizes that the poem is rhymed at all! As with the poem's rough accentual meter, this use of rhyme makes "Poetry of Departures" sound at once musical and conversational, at once carefully constructed and free-flowing.
It's worth thinking about the rhyme scheme in relation to the debate at the heart of the poem: is it better to run away and start a new, supposedly freer life, or stay in the boring one you already have? Rhymes are "specially-chosen" and might represent the "perfect order" that running away supposedly rebels against. The frequent use of slant rhymes could be its own minor rebellion against poetic form, something the poet stretches without breaking altogether.
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“Poetry of Departures” Speaker
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"Poetry of Departures," like much of Larkin's poetry, is written in the first person. Readers don't have to take the speaker as being Larkin himself in order to understand the poem, but the speaker's values line up pretty neatly with Larkin's own. Larkin once said, "I don't want to transcend the commonplace"—which is basically what lies behind the clichéd idea of starting again.
In any case, the speaker is the first to admit that their life is kind of boring. They acknowledge the way their room reflects their personality with its "specially-chosen junk," including "good books" and a "good bed." Everything about the speaker's life is nice and agreeable, rather than daring and adventurous. Ultimately, though, the speaker accepts the value of living the "reprehensibly perfect" life you've already got. Rejecting your life to start over, the speaker claims, is "artificial"—as "specially-chosen" as anything else.
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“Poetry of Departures” Setting
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"Poetry of Departures" doesn't take place in any specific location or at any specific time. That said, it does contrast two very different settings.
There's "home," which, according to the poem, "We all hate." Home represents regular, everyday life. The speaker's "room" is filled with "good books," a "good bed," and all the other "specially-chosen junk" with which people tend to surround themselves. Ironically, such a space can become utterly loathsome to its occupant; despite carefully crafting this home, its "perfect order" can feel stiflingly boring and predictable.
The fantasy of escaping this day-to-day life seems to offer an antidote to the drudgery of "home." The poem implies that people admire those who suddenly leave it all behind to start over again. These "departures" are usually presented as a kind of daring adventure, a bold break from the drudgery that keeps people from living their lives to the fullest. The speaker indulges in the idea a little, but with a touch of mockery, imagining how they'd "swagger the nut-strewn roads" and "Crouch in the fo'c'sle" of some ship as it sails across the ocean. To the speaker, these fantasies are ultimately as clichéd and "artificial" as just staying put. The poem implies that there's nothing inherently more authentic about building a "perfect" fantasy than building a "perfect[ly] regular life.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Poetry of Departures”
Literary Context
From the publication of his second collection, The Less Deceived (1955), until his death in 1985, Philip Larkin was one of the UK's most popular poets. The editor-critic J. D. Scott grouped Larkin, along with a number of other post-World War II English writers (including Larkin's close friend Kingsley Amis), into a school he called "The Movement." The Movement poets rejected many of the formal and stylistic experiments of the previous, modernist generation. They gravitated toward a plainer style along with characteristically English settings and themes.
"Poetry of Departures'' appears in The Less Deceived alongside other well-known favorites like "Toads," "Deceptions," and "I Remember, I Remember." Many of the collection's major themes are on display here, including self-deception, the mundanity of everyday existence, and the fear of mediocrity. The speaker's attachment to their "room," despite their evident resentment towards it, also foreshadows the repetitive, hermetic lifestyle on display in a later Larkin poem, "Mr Bleaney."
Larkin gained a reputation as both a brilliant stylist and a literary curmudgeon, and he was strongly associated with an attitude of blunt realism bordering on bleak cynicism (though some of his poems, including "An Arundel Tomb" and "The Whitsun Wedding," contain redemptive notes as well). While Larkin doesn't buy into what he sees as the clichéd deceptions that often make life bearable, he does value everyday existence. In an interview with biographer John Haffenden, he once remarked, "I don't want to transcend the commonplace"—which, perhaps, neatly sums up the view of the speaker in "Poetry of Departures."
Historical Context
Following the hardships of World War II, along with the first phase of the decolonization movement that dissolved the British Empire, the UK found itself in reduced circumstances. Having narrowly avoided bankruptcy after the war, Britain was slow to recover economically and entered an "age of austerity" that included rationing of food and raw materials. Prosperity returned to the country during the 1950s, when Larkin published The Less Deceived, but the memory of wartime belt-tightening remained, along with the sense that Britain's days as a global superpower were over.
Larkin was an Oxford University graduate from an affluent middle-class family. But his generation witnessed both the austerity years and the subsequent boom years—which brought, for example, a nationwide increase in home ownership, buoyed by government investment in the construction of new homes—and his poetry reflects its time and place in many subtle ways.
Larkin lived for a while in bedsits (a.k.a. bed-sitting rooms), a form of cheap lodging whose popularity in Britain increased after the war, which might explain the speaker's reference to "my room" rather than, say, "my house." However, Larkin—like many Britons during the postwar decades of renewed prosperity—evidently aspired to better circumstances. He eventually moved into a more spacious flat in Hull, where he remained for nearly two decades, and eventually bought his own house in 1974. Still, for most of his career, he lived modestly (despite his growing literary fame), and he remained a bachelor until he died.
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More “Poetry of Departures” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the poem by Larkin himself.
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Larkin at the British Library — Browse the resources of the Philip Larkin Collection at the British Library.
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A Larkin Documentary — Watch the 2003 documentary "Philip Larkin: Love and Death in Hull."
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An Interview with the Poet — Watch poet John Betjeman interview Philip Larkin in 1964.
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A Biography of the Poet — Learn more about Larkin's life and work courtesy of the Poetry Foundation.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Philip Larkin
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