A well-known poem from Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings (1964), "Talking in Bed" paints a pessimistic portrait of long-term love. Its speaker broods over the tense silences they and their romantic partner share while lying in bed together. The dreary view outside the couple's window seems to mirror their restless tension. The poem notes the irony that communication often becomes harder, not easier, as a relationship becomes more intimate.
Chatting with one's lover in bed should be the easiest kind of communication. Couples have so much history together in the bedroom, and pillow talk is basically synonymous with intimate candor between two people.
But my lover and I are increasingly silent in bed. Outside our window, a strong but intermittent wind piles up clouds and scatters them again, and shadowy cities rise in the distance. The world outside the bedroom is indifferent to the situation inside. Nothing outside can explain why, in the special intimacy of this setting, we find it harder and harder to say things that are both honest and sweet—or at least not false and harsh.
"Talking in Bed" reflects on the breakdown of communication between longtime romantic partners. The speaker points out that the closeness of a long relationship should make "Talking in bed"—communicating in the most intimate setting—especially easy. Yet in the speaker's experience, the opposite is true: in private moments, they and their partner increasingly strain for words that are "not untrue and not unkind." The poem suggests that honest and loving talk becomes harder once partners get to know each other extremely well. Familiarity breeds contempt, or at least an emotional complexity that makes superficial conversation seem false. As a result, romantic intimacy doesn't cure loneliness; it just imposes its own form of isolation.
The speaker finds that pillow talk is far less easy and intimate than it should be—at least, in the context of their own relationship. "Talking in bed ought to be" the "easiest" form of communication, the speaker believes, because it builds on the special closeness of a romantic relationship. This communication should be especially smooth in a long-term relationship, given the partners' deep history together: "Lying together there goes back so far." (In other words, they’ve been going to bed together for a long time.) In fact, in the popular imagination, pillow talk—conversation between lovers in bed—is synonymous with the intimate exchange of feelings, secrets, etc. It's an "emblem," or symbol, "of two people being honest" with each other. But in the speaker's relationship, this conventional idea has proven false. "More and more time passes silently" between the speaker and their lover, causing the speaker to question why communication has become so "difficult."
Though the poem offers no pat answers, it suggests that, for longtime couples, the challenge isn't talking per se—it's talking honestly and lovingly. The speaker and their partner struggle to "find / Words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and not unkind." That is, they may have plenty to say to each other, but because they've built up a long history together, honest communication would likely be complex and painful rather than simple and affectionate. Since they don't feel they should say everything they want to say, they fall back on silence as the easier option. Even when they do talk, they settle for words that are "not untrue and not unkind" rather than genuinely candid and caring.
So while the speaker may remain puzzled as to "why" talking in bed is so hard, the poem drops some clues. It suggests that the intimacy of the bedroom, which seems to offer a "unique distance from isolation," merely switches out one form of isolation for another. If anything, physical/domestic closeness makes emotional bonding harder, because it precludes the kind of superficial talk that happens at the start of a relationship.
The speaker of "Talking in Bed" broods on the "wind[]," "clouds," and "towns" outside their bedroom window, feeling alienated from all of them. "None of this cares for us," the speaker declares, implying that neither nature nor the rest of society can help this human couple work out their problems. Through these few small details, the poem suggests that relationships languish, in part, because they divide lovers from the rest of the world. A couple's extreme closeness can distance them from other people, eroding their happiness over time. Worse, no amount of human closeness can bring nature closer, or solve people's fundamental sense of alienation in an indifferent universe.
The view from the couple's window seems to highlight their loneliness and mirror their unease, hinting at sources of tension in their relationship. A restless—but "incomplete[ly]" restless—wind blows clouds here and there, perhaps symbolizing the speaker's (or the couple's) own ambivalent restlessness. For example, the couple may feel conflicting desires for romantic exploration and domestic stability. Meanwhile, "dark towns heap up on the horizon," as if reflecting a heaviness or darkness in the speaker's (or couple's) mood. This detail also positions the couple far from other people, as if the nearest human contact is out on the "horizon."
While the world outside the window may reflect the couple's problems, it can't explain or fix those problems. The speaker observes that the sky and towns don't "care[] for us" or help explain the silent tension the couple feels. These two are alone with their dissatisfaction—and their dissatisfaction may spring from their aloneness. Their longtime intimacy seems to have cut them off from others (e.g., people in the distant "towns"). Meanwhile, nature, as represented by the windy sky, remains indifferent to humans no matter what. It creates and threatens relationships as carelessly as it "Builds and disperses clouds." The speaker laments that "Nothing" outside "shows why" the relationship inside these walls has become so tense. Nature and society can seem to mirror individual problems but cannot solve them. No divine or human intervention is available to this couple.
As a result, the couple feels fundamentally stuck. The poem provides no consolation, apart from the possibility of finding "true and kind" words every now and then. It suggests that couples ultimately have to make the best of their "difficult" situations—without any help from the surrounding world.
Talking in bed ...
... people being honest.
The poem begins with what seems to be a general reflection on relationships. According to the speaker, "Talking in bed" as a couple "ought to be" the world's "easiest" kind of communication. After all, any longtime couple will have accumulated a lot of shared history, especially in the intimacy of the bedroom: "Lying together there goes back so far." In fact, there's a cultural expectation that pillow talk—conversation between couples in bed—will be especially candid, intimate, and revealing. Such talk is an "emblem," or cultural symbol, "of two people being honest."
However, that "ought to" suggests a qualification is around the corner. Maybe pillow talk should be open and honest, but for the speaker and their partner, it's not. The next stanza will reveal that the speaker isn't just discussing romance in general; they're discussing their own current romance.
This opening stanza begins to establish the poem's form. It's the first of four tercets, all of which use iambic pentameter (five-beat lines with a da-DUM, da-DUM rhythm) and a tightly woven rhyme scheme (ABA CAC DCD EEE). The form looks strict, yet the meter contains frequent variations, and most of the rhymes are inexact. (For instance, "easiest"/"honest" is a light rhyme; the "-est" syllable is stressed in "easiest" and unstressed in "honest.") These tensions and "imperfections" in the form hint at tensions and imperfections in the couple's relationship.
Yet more and ...
... on the horizon.
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... true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
The restless, or semi-restless, wind in lines 5-6 seems to symbolize the restlessness of the speaker/couple. The speaker describes the wind's "unrest" as "incomplete," meaning that the wind's not blowing all the time; it intermittently kicks up and dies down. It "Builds" up "clouds" only to "disperse[]" them again, like a kid making sandcastles and knocking them over. This personified wind seems a little bored or ambivalent, as if it doesn't know quite what it wants to do.
The same may be true of the speaker—and the speaker's partner. In a romantic context, restlessness usually translates to the desire to leave a relationship and/or explore other romantic options. Perhaps the speaker (and perhaps the speaker's partner) is feeling this kind of "unrest," but in an "incomplete" way. They've been together a while, and communication between them is breaking down, so perhaps they're unsure whether they want to stay together (keep "Build[ing]" their relationship) or go their separate ways ("disperse[]"). They're also restless in a literal sense as they lie awake "in bed."
The dark "towns" in line 7 seem to symbolize society or humanity in general. They also reflect the darkness of the speaker's, or couple's, mood.
The towns lie far away on the "horizon," underscoring how isolated this couple feels. (Even though, in theory, they should be "At [a] unique distance from isolation" as intimate partners.) The rest of society, or humanity, can't help them with their problems; they're alone together in this situation. Meanwhile, the way these "dark" towns "heap up" (in the speaker's perception, at least) suggests a psychological heaviness and darkness—the burden of depression, anxiety, etc. they're feeling in their silence.
"Talking in Bed" uses repetition (or repetition with variations) at two key moments.
First, there's the diacope in line 4:
Yet more and more time passes silently.
The ambiguous grammar of this line gives it two subtly different, but equally valid, potential meanings: "But, increasingly, time passes in silence" and "But more and more of our time passes in silence." Either way, the repetition of "more" emphasizes that this romance isn't just strained but increasingly strained. Things aren't getting any better with time.
Then there's the repetition in the last two lines:
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
The slight modification here has the effect of a subtle revision. First, the speaker admits that they and their partner struggle to be simultaneously honest and kind with each other. Then, they're forced to qualify even this admission: the couple settles, sometimes, for avoiding outright lies and cruelty. The double "not" gives the ending a distinctly negative tone, while the awkward rephrasing (the litotes of "not untrue" and "not unkind") suggests how awkward the relationship itself is.
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A symbol; a design or picture that represents something.
"Talking in Bed" consists of four three-line stanzas, or tercets. These stanzas are written in iambic pentameter (five-beat lines that alternate unstressed and stressed syllables), and they feature an unusual, interlocking rhyme scheme (ABA CAC DCD EEE).
There's no specific name for this poetic form, but it's faintly reminiscent of terza rima, a classic form that also uses tercets and an interlocking rhyme scheme. Terza rima is closely associated with the medieval Italian poet Dante, who famously wrote about hell, purgatory, and heaven (in the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso). If Larkin is distantly echoing Dante here, he may be suggesting that this romance is stuck in a kind of limbo, or is a mix of the heavenly and the hellish.
The poem is written in iambic pentameter. This means that its lines generally follow a five-beat, unstressed-stressed rhythm (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM), albeit with variations. Readers can hear this rhythm clearly in line 4, for example:
Yet more | and more | time pass- | es si- | lently.
Iambic pentameter is the most common meter in English poetry, and it provides the basic template here. However, while most metrical poems vary their meter somewhat, this poem contains a high number of variations. Lines 1 and 2, for example, each start with a trochee (a stressed-unstressed foot) rather than an iamb (unstressed-stressed), and line 1 contains another trochee as well:
Talking | in bed | ought to | be eas- | iest,
Lying | toge- | ther there | goes back | so far,
Larkin was a master of metrical technique, so he had no trouble following the standard beat when he wanted to! In this poem, the many variations seem related to the couple's communication problems. They're no longer "Talking" as fluidly as they used to, and the rough meter reflects this. Notice, also, that the final two lines (lines 11-12) fall short of the usual ten syllables, as if mimicking the way the couple struggles to find "Words" at all.
The poem uses a tightly interlocking rhyme scheme:
ABA CAC DCD EEE
However, there's some looseness to the rhymes themselves: several are slant rhymes ("silently"/"sky"/"why" or "horizon"/"isolation"). This tension between strict scheme and loose rhymes might subtly reflect the couple's own tension—their restlessness within the confines of their room and relationship.
Significantly, none of the poem's rhymes form a perfect pair (and only a pair). One line-ending word is unrhymed ("far"); the only rhyme pair is imperfect ("horizon"/"isolation"); and the rest of the rhymes are tripled rather than paired ("easiest"/"honest"/"unrest," "silently"/'sky"/"why," "find"/"kind"/"unkind"). Again, these features suggest the imperfection, instability, or discord of the poem's romantic pair.
Notice that the final rhyme is almost an identical rhyme—"kind"/"unkind"—except that these words are actually opposites! The words match in one sense and mismatch in another sense, mirroring the way the couple themselves are simultaneously matched and mismatched. (They're both silent in bed, and they've been together for a while—but they may not belong together.)
The speaker is one half of a relationship that seems to be struggling. At the very least, the speaker and their partner are struggling to communicate.
They've been a couple for some time now ("Lying together there goes back so far"), and while this history "ought to" make them more in tune with each other—especially in the privacy of the bedroom—the exact opposite is the case. They're finding it increasingly "difficult" to interact both truthfully and kindly. In other words, when they want to say something "true," it isn't necessarily "kind," and vice versa. As a result, they hold back on candid conversations and words of endearment, and they feel "more and more" tense in each other's company.
The poem is set in a bedroom, where two lovers or spouses—the speaker and an unidentified partner—lie silently together. The speaker provides no detail about the room itself, apart from the fact that it contains a "bed." However, the speaker briefly describes the view from the bedroom window(s): a windy "sky" and a few "dark towns" visible in the distance.
This sparse description reflects the apparent loneliness and deprivation of the couple's emotional life. They seem isolated from those faraway towns, as if they've closed themselves off from the rest of the world. They should be at a "distance from isolation," but really, they're in the thick of it, despite their physical closeness. The wind's sporadic "unrest" seems to mirror their inner restlessness and tension.
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.
Larkin published "Talking in Bed" in his 1964 collection The Whitsun Weddings. This slim volume contains many of Larkin's best-loved poems and, by poetry's standards, was a huge success. Poems like "Talking in Bed," "Mr Bleaney," "An Arundel Tomb," and "The Whitsun Weddings" itself reflect a sense of disenchantment with love, work, sex, religion, and more. This attitude became strongly associated with Larkin, who once claimed that "Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for [William] Wordsworth."
Like many of his other well-known poems, "Talking in Bed" takes a skeptical or pessimistic attitude toward love and domesticity. In a way, its basic scenario—two romantic partners lying silently beside each other—mirrors the imagery of "An Arundel Tomb," in which the carving on an antique tomb depicts a husband and wife resting side by side. That poem ends a shade less pessimistically, however:
[...] The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
Philip Larkin was born in 1922 and died in 1985. For most of his life, then, Larkin lived under the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Though old enough to fight in World War II, Larkin was excused from service due to poor eyesight. After the publication of The Whitsun Weddings—which was received well critically and sold in large numbers—Larkin received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Later in life, he turned down the position of UK Poet Laureate.
Larkin's poetry is strongly associated with the culture and atmosphere of mid-20th-century Britain. Britain narrowly avoided bankruptcy after World War II (1939-1945) and was slow to recover economically. Prosperity returned to the country during the 1950s and 1960s, however, and Larkin wrote "Talking In Bed" during these boom years. Against a cultural background of relative optimism about home and family, Larkin's poetry paints a darker picture of domestic life, informed in part by his troubled relationship with his own parents. Though Larkin never married, he had several long-term and at times overlapping romantic partnerships, notably with two scholars/academics: Monica Jones and Maeve Brennan (said to be the inspiration for much of The Whitsun Weddings).
The Poem Aloud — Listen to Philip Larkin read "Talking in Bed."
The Poet's Life and Work — A brief biography of Larkin at the Poetry Foundation.
Larkin on TV — The South Bank Show visits and interviews Larkin in 1981.
The Larkin Society — The website of the Philip Larkin Society, dedicated to the poet and his legacy.
More on "The Movement" — A retrospective on the postwar literary movement with which Larkin is associated.