In:Style as Motivated Choice: In memory of Peter Verdonk (1934–2021)
Edited by Michael Burke and Joanna Gavins
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 44] 2025
► pp. 148–158
Chapter 9Verbal pickles and pickling
A stylistic engagement with Sinéad Morrissey’s “Through the Square Window”, with help from Philip Larkin and Peter Verdonk
Published online: 8 May 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.44.09too
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.44.09too
Abstract
Peter Verdonk championed canonical modern poets from Great Britain and Ireland, and was well aware of how they
sometimes composed “in dialogue” with their antecedent peers (Heaney responding to Hardy, for example). Here I speculate on
how he might have admired poems by Sinéad Morrissey, even though she appears in one poem to reprimand the great Philip Larkin
for his seeming sexism. I offer some (I hope) Verdonkian stylistic commentary on Morrissey’s “Through the Square Window”,
while also suggesting that Verdonk’s reminders about context-variability and historical circumstances are important in a
charitable reading of Larkin’s “Born Yesterday”.
Keywords: deixis, Philip Larkin, Sinéad Morrissey, poetry, sexism, stylistics, transitivity
Article outline
- Conclusion
Acknowledgement References
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