Short of nothing: expanding horizons of ‘scarcity’ in the poetry of Peter Larkin

Abstract

'Scarcity' is a key term in the poetry of Peter Larkin. It first makes its appearance in two poems from 1992, in which 'scarcity' is primarily understood either ecologically or as referring to efficiency in biological processes. In poetry written later in the 1990s 'scarcity' acquires an additional ontological, even theological, dimension, closely related to a line of thought Larkin began developing in critical essays on the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The expanded sense of 'scarcity', as ontological 'promise', is articulated in two of Larkin's poems published in 1998, opening the path to a rich body of writing which has continued to evolve up to the present. This essay will examine the poetry of the early 1990s in which the term 'scarcity' initially appears, and then review the emergence of the much expanded concept of 'scarcity' in poems from the mid to late 1990s. Affinities between the ideas Larkin explores poetically and those he discusses in his essays of that period on Wordsworth and Coleridge will be examined. Larkin's phenomenological approach is discussed, including the influence of Merleau-Ponty, and of the theologians Jean-Luc Marion and Jean-Louis Chrétien. The manifestation in his recent poetry of a more overtly theological concept of 'scarcity' is illustrated with reference to a poem from 2007.