It Deepens Like a Coastal Shelf

Reading Philip Larkin's This Be the Verse as a parent is so very different from reading it as a college student. Instead of an brash indictment, it's a wry apology, hands palm-up, whaddayagonnado. Go tell it to your editor, kid, go tell your therapist.

I find that becoming a mother has both honed my criticism of my own parents, and softened my eyes. The latter mostly in the hope that as my own daughters reach their thirties, they might look with forgiveness upon me.

I can spend an entire day handling meltdowns with aplomb, providing vegetables and cut-up hot dogs, engineering pleasant activities, and then wreck it all in one fell swoop at the end of the day. Which counts for more? The successfully navigated wobbleboard of a day, or the devastating mishandling of an evening? I'm not sure if I get a sticker on my chart, or my name on the blackboard.

In any event, one of the links to the above-referenced poem contains a comments section. A comments section! On poetry! So very delightful! So rife with disapproval! So utterly hilarious and depressing!

P.S. The Germans are the funniest. The Americans are pompous.
P.P.S. Yes, I am aware that it is not very nice to make fun of innocent people on the internet. However 1) I was under the impression that that was what the internet was for, and 2) dude, people getting all up in arms, in writing, in a public space, about poetry they don't get is really fucking funny. And 3) I feel better already.

Comments

[Superla]

I really like to read the comments at songmeanings.net for the same reason. Pretty much every song has a comment along the lines of, "I think this is about a kid that doesn't fit in, and he really likes this popular girl, but she doesn't like him." And, no, it's not nice to make fun, but it does pass the time.

[Gretchen The Babysitter]

You know, Jo, you're an awesome mama. Seriously. The kind of mama I can't wait to be.

[Kristen]

Very nice & true comment on the Larkin poem. Haven't thought about it since using it to indict my in-laws prior to the birth of my child, but now that you've caused me to reconsider, I think you're exactly right.