We are short-termed and shortsighted, and we live only in the present and it is better for us to be so – this is Philip Larkin’s conclusion in his poem Reference Back, although the title suggests a reflection of some sort, a remembering, and he uses this word twice in the second stanza. But as we read on, we see why there is the hesitation for reflection.
That was a pretty one, I heard you call
From the unsatisfactory hall
To the unsatisfactory room where I
Played record after record, idly
Wasting my time at home, that you
Looked so much forward to.
Oliver’s Riverside Blues, it was. And now
I shall, I suppose, always remember how
The flock of notes those antique negroes blew
Out of Chicago air into
A huge remembering pre-electric horn
The year after I was born
Three decades later made this sudden bridge
From your unsatisfactory age
To my unsatisfactory prime.
Truly, though our element is time,
We are not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so.
The poem, written in couplets, begins with the call of someone other than the narrator, Larkin, to him, from another room, which Larkin describes as an unsatisfactory hall. Instantly we get something of a picture of not the place itself, but an atmosphere of the place. The caller seems to want to engage in conversation with Larkin, or to be a participant in his enjoyment of blues, which he was a big fan and avid collector of. The same word is used to describe the room in which Larkin currently listens to blues. With this description of the place, we can guess that, besides the indulgence of blues itself as a pleasurable pastime, it is also used as an escape from having to be in the same unsatisfactory room with the other person. With the first line breaking at call, which is then followed on the page by silent white space, we can hear the lack of a response – just silence in return to someone who was hoping to engage in communication. The judgment though of the caller is vapid, however, and implies that the caller is not really a listener of blues, but it was only a desperate attempt to have communication with Larkin.
He goes on to say that he was playing “record after record, idly/Wasting my time at home, that you/Looked so much forward to.” Here we have the speaker admitting the situation; the caller, his lover, looked forward to spending time with him at home, but he chose to isolate himself away in a room to solitarily and selfishly indulge in listening to blues. Instead of being with the other person, or even inviting her to listen to blues with him, he does this alone and prefers to waste his time away. But who sees it as an idle wasting away of time? We are not so sure, because Larkin uses this description without attributing it to anyone. He confesses it might be an idle wasting away of time, as others may see it as such, but in his eyes it may have been time spent valuably. Furthermore, with the image of separation between the two people, it was time happily spent.
The next stanza begins with Larkin telling us the name of the artist and the song he was listening to, (King) Oliver’s Riverside Blues. From here, the poem is shown to be a complete memory, a reference back, per the title as the first line reads, “Oliver’s Riverside Blues, it was.” The line then continues, “And now/I shall, I suppose, always remember . . .” he remembers how the music was played and goes further back in time to the year of the recording of Riverside Blues, which was in 1923. We get this information from Larkin saying “The year after I was born”, which was in 1922. This now is an act of reflection and referencing back by Larkin, which is what poems are mostly about and made up of – memories. The act of writing a poem references back to previous acts of composition, each act of the mind and the hand has a memory before it. His choice of “antique” to describe the negro musicians places them beyond contemporary time and memory, in a manner, since antique is used to describe something very, very old and usually of some worth. The “huge remembering pre-electric horn” defines the music’s time and has a memory of its own, so to speak, since musicians invoke memories with their music; also, the horn and the music both recall earlier music and performances, the loss in nostalgia. It is important to note that the use of couplets and meter shape the memory, since memories are formless.
But now Larkin jumps back into the present and the years are conflated between 1923 and the present through the following line, “Three decades later made this sudden bridge[.]” The word bridge is a good break since it connects the line it ends to the following line, but also because one gets the visual blankness of the page after the word at the line’s break, as if it connects to nothing. The music, the bridge, acts as the connection between Larkin and the other person in a manner that the person’s desperate attempt at communication that opens the poem didn't. But now we come upon that word again, unsatisfactory, with all that it implies. There is still much discomfort present, even though the music brings them together, even while they were separate. There is also dissatisfaction with both in their then present periods in life.
The third and final stanza begins with “Truly,” as if Larkin is on the verge of saying or affirming something he very much believes. He says, “though our element is time,/We are not suited to the long perspectives/Open at each instant of our lives.” We are short-termed and shortsighted. Unlike the music that lives beyond the date of its composition and continues to have a life of its own even after all of the original musicians have died, we humans live in the present, in the now and that is all we can do, or prefer to do, or is preferable for us to do. The long perspectives open before and after each moment we live in contain memories and desires. Again, another effective line break, this one with perspective, is accomplished, as after the word the white blankness of the page is such a long perspective that is open to each instant of our lives. Then in the following line, instant sits effectively in the middle of the line with three words preceding and following it, as the long perspectives that precede and follow each instant of our lives, bracketing us.
These long perspectives “link us to our losses” is what he affirms, if we reference back to what he seemed to just about to do with “Truly”. It is not very enjoyable to engage too much in reflection. When we do so, we end up seeing so much that is disappointing in our lives, such as what this poem illustrates: there is unhappiness – the separation between Larkin and his lover; the unsatisfactory hall and room; her unsatisfactory age and his unsatisfactory prime. “Worse,” he says, long perspectives show us that what we presently have is not as ideal and happy as it once was, that there is a decline in our circumstances. This vision is too much to bear. It is “[b]lindingly undiminished.” It is heartbreaking. It is all unsatisfactory. We then fool ourselves into thinking that if we had acted differently things might have turned out better. However painful and unbearable the act of reflection, Larkin uses it to create a poem which has lived a life of its own like Oliver’s Riverside Blues.
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