17 pages • 34 minutes read
Philip LarkinThe Explosion
Philip LarkinFiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“Aubade” by Philip Larkin (1977)
Perhaps Larkin’s signature poem, published late in his career, “Aubade,” French for morning song, examines Larkin’s apprehensions over death. He considers the tally of his life, what he has done and what he will never do given the inevitability of death. Unlike “The Explosion,” this is a dark poem. Nothing remedies the poet’s anxiety.
“Miners” by Wilfrid Owen (1918)
Written by one of the most influential British poets from the generation before Larkin, this poem is what “The Explosion” is not: an occasional poem, a disaster poem published just days after a particular catastrophe, the Minnie Pit collapse of 1918, in which more than 150 miners perished. Unlike Larkin, Owen projects himself into the suffering of the miners and then offers the reflection that these brave men died just to provide coal to prolong the brutal and pointless ongoing war in Europe.
“Convergence of the Twain” by Thomas Hardy (1912)
Larkin acknowledged his own development as a poet pivoted on his rediscovery of the compassionate naturalism of Thomas Hardy. Here, unlike “The Explosion,” the poet reflects on a particular mass catastrophe, the sinking of Titanic in the North Atlantic. Hardy distills from that catastrophe dark lessons about humanity’s arrogance, nature’s indifference, and the cool logic of inevitability.
Further Literary Resources
“The Lark in English Poetry” by James V. Baker (1950)
A seminal article written before Larkin’s poem, Baker traces out the uses of the lark in a wide range of British poetry, most notably the sonnets of Shakespeare and the celebratory nature poems of the Romantics, most notably Percy Shelley. The argument stresses the lark as a symbol of hope and nature’s rejuvenating energy.
“The Importance of Philip Larkin” by John Wain (1986)
Written shortly after Larkin’s death, this appreciation, by one of Britain’s most respected poets, argues that Larkin struggled to find an American audience because (and Wain uses “The Explosion” as an example) Larkin refused to concede his poetry to cheap sentimentalism. By refusing to sensationalize the tragedy of a mine disaster, Larkin explores rather the event of death itself in lines that reflect his dedication to crafting, the subtle music of his “fine adjustments.”
“Rather than Words’: Philip Larkin’s High Windows” by Neil Forsyth (2010)
A reading of Larkin’s final collection, the article looks at the impact of Larkin’s fascination with American jazz as an element critical to his sense of prosody, particularly his experiments with rhythm. The article presents a careful scan of “The Explosion” as an example of three-line unrhymed stanzas set in trochaic tetrameter, a very eccentric pattern.
Listen to Poem
Given that Larkin is often considered a poet’s poet, this reading, by poet and literary critic James Fenton, available on YouTube, reveals the poem’s intricate aural effect. The poet rises and falls to the rhythm of Larkin’s off-beat meter; Fenton pauses at places that delight into the quiet music of Larkin’s subtle and unforced sense of lingering long vowels and then the hard cacophony of consonants. Other readings on YouTube force the focus on British mining accidents, with appropriate vintage photos of Britain’s mine fields (ironic, of course, because Larkin had no direct knowledge of them). Fenton’s reading, set against a simple white screen, puts the focus on Larkin’s deft sense of rhythm.
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By Philip Larkin
