I've begun to read the works of the British poet Philip Larkin lately. Here a couple of his poems, which contain a few obscenities that should be easy to figure out. What do you think of them?



Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They :):):):) 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 :):):):)ed 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.




Philip Larkin - High Windows

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's :):):):)ing her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

I'm in a computer lab in college right now, and went to the toilet earlier and among the genius scrawled on the cubicle wall was:

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.

When I saw it there I thought the "deepens like a coastal shelf" was stupid sounding simile.

Of course now that I know it wasn't made up by some emo with diarrhea, and by a respected poet, I think its awesome.

I'm in a computer lab in college right now, and went to the toilet earlier and among the genius scrawled on the cubicle wall was:



When I saw it there I thought the "deepens like a coastal shelf" was stupid sounding simile.

Of course now that I know it wasn't made up by some emo with diarrhea, and by a respected poet, I think its awesome.

That is awesome.

What I think that Larkin was trying to convey with his "coastal shelf" is that the misery imparted upon successive generations of kids by their parents increases at a catastrophic rate and that eventually, will just fall into a deepening precipice. Or, that at first, these faults seem trivial and unimportant, but they eventually agglomerate into something inescapable.

Larkin advises us to "get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself." For obvious reasons, we can't take this line as a literal truth - we cannot run away from the hand that feeds us at such an early age and we are never going to stop having children. I think that this was written at a time when the ideals of a nuclear family were being re-evaluated, and what he is really telling us not to do is to absorb everything that our parents teach us, and instead to become our own individuals. And, of course, we shouldn't facilitate passive absorption of ideals among our own kids, else the problem spirals into the infinite.

Larkin advises us to "get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself." For obvious reasons, we can't take this line as a literal truth - we cannot run away from the hand that feeds us at such an early age and we are never going to stop having children.

I don't see why it can't be taken as literal advice. I'd have thought that "get out as early as you can" means removing yourself from the vicious cycle by not having any kids yourself, and that's perfectly possible, as many people don't. Larkin didn't, as far as I know, and neither have I!

Alternatively, "get out as early as you can" might have a more morbid meaning, bearing in mind that the poem's title is a reference to Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem".

I don't see why it can't be taken as literal advice. I'd have thought that "get out as early as you can" means removing yourself from the vicious cycle by not having any kids yourself, and that's perfectly possible, as many people don't. Larkin didn't, as far as I know, and neither have I!

Hah, I'll concede that I didn't think this through well enough, but I was reading it as more of a bitter reflection on society that still relates the sober dark side of the parent-child relationship.

I've also thought of the possibility that Larkin may be suggesting "that" kind of escape, but there isn't much of a macabre element to the poem that might suggest that.

I really liked Aubade. But that's really the only thing I've read of him.

as for Larkin on the "get out as early as you can" and all- isn't Larkin a pretty notable depressed person? I wouldn't be surprised if he's just advocating getting out of the cycle of life and whatnot.

but I need to read the poem. And note I know nothing about poetry.