Shades of Larkin: Singularity and Transcendence in Derek Mahon's "A Garage in Co. Cork"

Philip Larkin's influence upon Derek Mahon has generally been slighted in criticism, although critical work on Larkin and Mahon's contemporary, Seamus Heaney, abounds. This essay proposes the centrality of Larkin to Mahon's work, particularly exemplified in one of Mahon's masterpieces, "A Garage in Co. Cork," through analyzing Mahon's adoption of Larkin's touristic pose in his poetry (exemplified in "Church Going" and "The Whitsun Weddings") that enables both poets to apprehend an often unexpected transcendence that inheres in quotidian objects through the process of literary singularity. Moreover, Larkin's penchant for evoking transcendence through his tightly controlled forms influenced Mahon's similar desire, as seen in the debt "A Garage" owes to "Aubade" in its rhyme scheme and overall length. At the same time, "A Garage" employs multiple allusions to Larkin's poetry, including "High Windows" and "Aubade," only to heavily revise and rework these allusions in rejecting what Mahon perceives as Larkin's eventual drift toward death and nihilism, enabling him to affirm and recreate lost and marginalized human, animal and vegetal life.