Unsnarking Philip Larkin
Or, This Be The Reverse
With Father’s Day right around the corner, one famous stanza will come to many minds despite never appearing on a single greeting card. Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse” starts by slapping the reader in the face:
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.
The result is a masterwork, a poem that
a) identifies a rarely spoken but widely held belief (“they fuck you up”)
b) explains where it comes from (“man hands on misery to man”), and
c) offers a solution (“don’t have any kids yourself.”)
Groucho Marx said his “favourite poem is the one that starts ‘Thirty days hath September’ because it actually tells you something.” Larkin’s poem tells you something and then some.
Every great work inspires great parodies, and that’s where things get interesting. Because Larkin efficiently pulls the rug out from under the whole human comedy, the takeoffs on “This Be The Verse” — and there are many — have a counterintuitive job. Instead of subverting the natural order, they have to reinstate it.
You can’t do that by outsnarking Larkin. When The Spectator ran a contest in 2012 to refute his poem titled “This Be The Reverse,” winner Alan Millard cleverly accused Larkin of giving whiny kids an easy out:
This be my verse, and this the truth,
As one discovers if one delves:
Youth hands on misery to youth
By blaming parents, not themselves.
While runner-up W.J. Webster neatly razzed him for ingratitude:
Come off it, Phil! You’re glad enough
To take the perks of how you are.
It animates your verse, that stuff —
The unhealed wound beneath the scar.
Neither of these rebuttals really offers a compelling counter argument because they implicitly embrace the central premise that we’re all effed up. But what if you squint your eyes, think nice thoughts, and assume that over the generations human misery doesn’t “deepen like a coastal shelf”?
Carol Rumens does that by spoofing Larkin’s childless grumpitude with unflinching optimism, and as a bonus she defuses his f-bomb:
Not everybody’s
Childhood sucked;
There are some kiddies
Not up-fuckedThey moan and shout,
Won’t take advice.
But — hang about —
Most turn out nice—If not better
Than us, no worse
Sad non-begetter,
That bean’t the verse.
The shining lesson here: If you can’t outsnark, unsnark. The very best Larkin response does that with pure childlike wonder. Adrian Mitchell’s “This Be The Worst” was apparently inspired by a radio announcer reading the original as “they tuck you up” to avoid shocking listeners, and the poet extended this idea to create a mirror image poem about happy childhoods.
They tuck you up, your mum and dad,
They read you Peter Rabbit, too.
They give you all the treats they had
And add some extra, just for you.
Kind wit as a euphoric response to snarkness and darkness is my running theme (cf. Goldblatt and Lasso), and this poem nicely qualifies. There are different versions of the ending floating around; here’s the one that makes me want to buy my children candy:
Man hands on happiness to man,
It shines out like a sweetshop shelf
So love your parents all you can
And have some cheerful kids yourself.
Quick quips; lightning
“[A successful parent is one] who raises a child who grows up and is able to pay for his or her own psychoanalysis.”
— Nora Ephron
“Reprimand your child regularly every day. You may not know why, but the kid does.”
— Harry Hershfield
“Whoever has not got a good father should procure one.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Speaking of…
Dad jokes
Withholding fathers & joyless desserts
Get Wit Quick No. 154 has a thousand fathers, but most people only have one. Hang about! In 2009, the great Helen Pidd reported on a divorce court judge who made a habit of quoting “This Be The Verse” to squabbling parents, and adding “These four lines seem to me to give a clear warning to parents who, post-separation, continue to fight the battles of the past, and show each other no respect.” The most astute readers will recall Ms. Pidd featured prominently in GWQ No. 1, which reported on what you should yell at men on unicycles. Spoiler alert: Larkin isn’t Martin Amis’s dad. All good dad jokes are repeated, so I’ll borrow these lines from GWQ No. 102: Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting is the cure for dad jokes, or is at least full of cured dad jokes. If you know that the opposite of ladyfingers are Mentos, tap the ❤️ below.