A study of Reading Habits - Larkin

From within this poem created by Larkin we see that it is the persona talking through the different stages of aging. From within the first stanza we are able to see that this is a part of the persona's childhood when he was younger and what books did for him during that time. We are able to see that books helped him escape the bullies and thugs by the phrase "dirty dogs". We also see that the books made him imagine that he was within the books as one of the characters, preferably as the hero of the novel. This is shown with the phrase, "Cured most things" for it showed that he was able to escape and be free within these books.
As we move on to the middle stanza we see that this is a description of the persona's teenage years but still has that hold of being childlike. We can see from the word "lark" that people still bully and make fun of him and also the appearance of this childlike theme with the phrase, "Me and my coat and fangs". This portrays to the reader that he is still acting like a child for he is dressing up and acting like a young school boy. From this we do not get a very serious image portrayed to us. Throughout the rest of the stanza however we get a change of imagery to it being very light-hearted and exciting images towards the reader. From this we see the change in the persona to be moving on to a different genre of books. He has moved onto the more romantic/erotic side which allow him to give himself more thrills unlike the other books he use to read when he was younger.
When we move on to the final stanza we then see a key phrase in the first line stating, "Don't read much now" which implies to us the sudden change aging has occured upon the persona. For the persona, the books have not changed but he has in general. They have lost their magic for him and instead of relating himself to the hero in the book he is portraying himself to being the coward. His imagination and ability to get make into these books is no longer there. From within this poem by Larkin we can see that there are a range of negative aspects on age, loneliness and the loss of imagination and escape. Poems that are able to relate to this would be Wild Oats, Broadcast and finally Love Songs in Age.