Starting on a positive note..

This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

This poem, composed in 1971 and included in Larkin's High Windows collection, is certainly one of his most famous. I didn't come across it until about thirty years after it was written. Unfortunately, I can't remember why there was so much coverage on Larkin in the English media. This publicity had been floating around for a while, ever since his Selected Letters revealed his racism and interest in pornography.

These letters featured the coarser side of Larkin, as does the above poem. Yet the row was about Larkin's racism. Everyone already knew Larkin had issues. Flick to almost any page of his Collected Poems for evidence of his boredom with life, anti-social behavior, and fear of women. But racism apparently wouldn't do.

I was struck by this controversial figure and began to investigate. Being sixteen at the time probably added to my complete immersion. I was probably studying "Paradise Lost" for my English A Level at the time, and compared to that, Larkin was fantastic. In poems such as "This Be The Verse," it was as if he was reaching out to teenage boys in particular, albeit from beyond the grave. I could hear him murmuring to me: "You think you know about angst?" Needless to say I welcomed challenge. But my obsession with this work reached its acme when I had the pleasure of informing my mother that it was my favorite poem. I didn't read Larkin's letters until several years later, when I received the controversial tome as a gift from - you've guessed it - my mother.

It's easy to see why this poem is so memorable. In twelve lines of poetry, the reader, adolescent or otherwise, can indulge in two expletives: an emphatic verb in the first line and a past participle in line 5. Furthermore, it is impossible to forget the iambs. Ten of the twelve lines bounce along with a deceptively simple pattern of an unstressed breve followed by a stressed ictus. An explanation of these terms can be found here. This regular, almost plodding rhythm, combined with a cinch of an ABAB rhyme scheme, gives this poem a nursery rhyme feel. The opening stanza in particular is easy as pie to understand, as it is comprised almost completely of monosyllables. A five-year-old with an advanced knowledge of bad language would be able to understand this poem as easily as an adult.

The only potential difficulty is its simile. The last stanza focuses on this cumulative aspect of man's misery. The current generation carries the burden of hereditary human sadness, handed down in ever increasing amounts. Much worse than saying "your parents fuck you up," this poem goes on to say something along the lines of: "you can only stop this overwhelming chain of misery by not reproducing and dying as soon as possible." The poem will always be remembered for its opening, but the real stinger comes at the very end. After a dash of elegant, figurative language, Larkin sinks lower than before, barking these morbid thoughts at the reader in the form of imperative verbs. So you can see why my mother was so thrilled that this was my favorite poem.