tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post3407302183948633147..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Philip Larkin: This Be the VerseUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-43958751225494334782012-10-11T17:04:36.634-07:002012-10-11T17:04:36.634-07:00"... I couldn’t wait to get out and get away...."... I couldn’t wait to get out and get away. Even under the best of circumstances, none of us leaves completely unscathed. I figured I would take the measure of the world. I soon learned that the world could take a measure of me."<br /><br />Hazen, I hear you. <br /><br />WB, about the old-style hats and coats, we do see those hats and coats adorning the central figure of repressive authority in the photos here -- the dread headmaster. Is it too much to hope that it is his shoes which are being fiddled-with under the table by the class clown?TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-7948547651514861032012-10-11T16:51:27.743-07:002012-10-11T16:51:27.743-07:00That marking of the slow, inexorable deepening of ...That marking of the slow, inexorable deepening of the wrong "like a coastal shelf" (which Susan points to) is surely crucial here. The image gives a seriousness and inevitability to a world view that up to that point may appear merely the dyspeptic melancholy of someone who feels he has failed at life -- or, worse, that life has failed him. But geology is what it is; failure and success don't enter into it.<br /><br />Annie, the 50s school uniforms brought back memories for us as well. <br /><br />For Angelica, who attended school in the Commonwealth, the dress rules were: winter, a grey wool tunic with a white blouse; summer, a pale green cotton tunic; with hats and gloves compulsory in both seasons (straw hat in summer, beret in winter).<br /><br />As for me, in parochial schools in Chicago, dress codes were precise and vigorously enforced -- in retrospect, probably a good idea, given this was otherwise (or even anyway) a pack of scruffy ragamuffins. Each school had its codes. At high school (boys only, presided over by Dominicans), ties were compulsory, together with either a proper jacket or a sweater. Of course, the general endeavour was to skirt these (and all other) rules. In consequence, the majority of boys kept a tatty old tie and a single rancid, stinking sweater in a locker, to be donned upon arrival in the morning and left in the locker at the end of the day. The lockers were cleared only once a year, after Spring term. By springtime it would have been possible for a blind, deaf monitor to detect the opening of a locker door anywhere up and down the labyrinthine subterranean locker corridors, relying solely on olfactory evidence.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-27973204876908920762012-10-11T16:49:31.461-07:002012-10-11T16:49:31.461-07:00For the record, I had a safe and sound upbringing,...For the record, I had a safe and sound upbringing, relatively speaking. Even as a child I knew that my parents loved me, and my brother too. From time to time, the two of us remark on our good fortune. Still, I couldn’t wait to get out and get away. Even under the best of circumstances, none of us leaves completely unscathed. I figured I would take the measure of the world. I soon learned that the world could take a measure of me.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-32982831942231621352012-10-11T15:10:29.014-07:002012-10-11T15:10:29.014-07:00"It deepens like a coastal shelf"
This ..."It deepens like a coastal shelf"<br /><br />This is so sharp--also so devastatingly true. Drops off inside the poem, sloughs off the top part.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-11636206547918690242012-10-11T15:03:16.794-07:002012-10-11T15:03:16.794-07:00To the Lying Poets
I like your cards
please keep ...To the Lying Poets<br /><br />I like your cards<br />please keep them<br />wrapped up<br />in wool<br />and store them<br />with their friends<br />also there<br />barely alive<br />under the bandages<br />waiting to exact revenge<br />unto the unsuspecting masses.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-60170847404732550502012-10-11T13:50:55.346-07:002012-10-11T13:50:55.346-07:00"...fools in old-atyle hats and coats"
..."...fools in old-atyle hats and coats"<br /><br />Such a comical get-up for the bearers of congenital misery!Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-55556978505671132672012-10-11T13:25:52.282-07:002012-10-11T13:25:52.282-07:00Thanks, Hazen.Thanks, Hazen.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-65009272465478866552012-10-11T13:12:10.396-07:002012-10-11T13:12:10.396-07:00This Be My Verse
(for better or worse)
(on viewing...This Be My Verse<br />(for better or worse)<br />(on viewing the Coventry schoolkids):<br /><br />Mischievous boys<br />in caps, jackets ... ties!!!<br />a half century past.<br />God, how time flies.<br />What's gone and what lasts -<br />old sorrows ... kept joys.<br /><br />Okay that was pretty lame but - I had to wear a school uniform way back when, navy blue mostly. Am remembering scenes of little boys in wrinkled shirts and skinny ties wrestling in the schoolyard, a nun marching one of them gruffly, by the ear, to Detention. I even remember his name. Blast from the past, ha ha. Thanks, Tomawynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01541564613932885469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-72365787091022560892012-10-11T11:35:04.869-07:002012-10-11T11:35:04.869-07:00In case anyone might be tempted to think the poet ...In case anyone might be tempted to think the poet was just playing about here:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rjRYSfCJvM&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Philip Larkin reads This Be the Verse</a><br /><br />The poem's caustic account of nuclear family structure and its effects may be unpleasant to consider, but then again it may in many cases be dead-on. Larkin's seems to be one of those cases. I think Hazen's comment fits here. Thus the candour. When one feels a poet is not lying, one is grateful.<br /><br />Of course Larkin never visited California (the horror!), so my superimposition of that painfully happy (pinch me again, mom) family, at the top of the post, is merely an attempt to suggest that what Larkin says in his poem about a life spent in grim Coventry (early on) and grimmer Hull (later -- he was a librarian there) may be to at least some extent generalized to include life elsewhere.<br /><br />The schoolboy who shot himself after an argument with his parents pretty much clinches the poem's case (as it were).<br /><br />And as Larkin abhorred America and Americans and wouldn't have been caught dead there, it's obviously true also that he has never been inside the bloody quaking heart of an American Trauma Center (see bottom photo) -- but I have been there, and recently enough to have been assailed by thoughts of the extremity of remedy that is at times called for in the case of the products of American mums and dads. It might come as a surprise to hear that a large share of the lamentation that surrounds one in such places has family dysfunction as origin.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-995821402707460822012-10-11T11:18:43.527-07:002012-10-11T11:18:43.527-07:00"Tell him it is alright
to go gathering, too,..."Tell him it is alright<br />to go gathering, too, and come home<br />with nothing." A great tonic indeed, Susan.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-34741035789739375702012-10-11T10:53:46.806-07:002012-10-11T10:53:46.806-07:00Their clothing appears disciplined
hyper against ...Their clothing appears disciplined <br />hyper against each other.<br /><br />It will all appear different<br />after an Alka-Seltzer<br />a coupla aspirin. Put your feet<br />up, there. Start to turn things<br />upside down.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17850849574408978842012-10-11T10:23:51.100-07:002012-10-11T10:23:51.100-07:00The Tonic
reliable, smooth
not like too many kids...The Tonic<br /><br />reliable, smooth<br />not like too many kids <br />at clown training school.<br />One appears to be reading.<br />A master in the art<br />of pretend.<br /><br />They will soon be handsome<br />with great hair.<br />For now, search their faces<br />for the one<br />who might hang himself.<br />Smile at him, encouragingly.<br />The others have gone off<br />to hunt. Tell him it is alright<br />to go gathering, too, and come home<br />with nothing.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47787502965847308032012-10-11T09:31:55.845-07:002012-10-11T09:31:55.845-07:00Larkin is wonderfully candid. Freud believed that ...Larkin is wonderfully candid. Freud believed that the ‘nuclear’ family is the origin of neurosis and sexual perversion. Add in religion’s sanction for the sexual mutilation of children, a hierarchical family structure, and the cruelty and child abuse disguised as punishment that comes with it, and you’ve got a potent vector for disease.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89989100341064630962012-10-11T06:27:03.375-07:002012-10-11T06:27:03.375-07:00Well it did seem the hunter home from the hill sho...Well it did seem the hunter home from the hill should be deserving of some small liquid reward.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-48561544755484722902012-10-11T03:38:00.554-07:002012-10-11T03:38:00.554-07:00I love this poem. But I did go on to have kids mys...I love this poem. But I did go on to have kids myself.<br /><br />Good to see PL with a glass of G&T to complement the Players you sent me yesterday.Jonathan Chanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03647746685252448938noreply@blogger.com