The Explosion

In his understated, elegiac account of a massive mine explosion, British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) measures the impact of the disaster on the men killed in the mine and on their families who gather in a memorial service to mourn the loss, struggling to make sense of it. The poem itself struggles to come to terms with death that is sudden, unexpected, and devastating.

Published in 1974, “The Explosion” is not a response to any particular mining accident (Larkin was moved to write the poem after watching a BBC documentary on the perils of British mining); rather, the poem uses the occasion of a mining catastrophe, really of any large-scale catastrophe, to offer a meditation not just on the brutal intrusion of death on such a scale but on the need to carry on, how survivors refuse to surrender even to the dark reality of such overwhelming grief.

Larkin, by reputation one of the most cerebral poets in the canon of 20th-century British poetics, was known not only for poems rich with intellectual argument but for intricate prosody, influenced by Larkin’s interest in jazz, specifically deftly-conceived rhythms and subtly sustained sonic effects, both of which this poem, written late in Larkin’s career, reflects.

Poet Biography

Philip Larkin was born 9 August 1922 in Coventry, a city about 100 miles northwest of London. His father was a prominent city official, and Larkin grew up in a comfortable home surrounded by books. Shy and struggling with a stammer, Larkin grew up with few friends. A voracious reader, Larkin published short verses in his school literary magazine before he went off to St. John’s College in 1940. Rejected for military service because of poor eyesight, Larkin dedicated himself to his studies, graduating in 1943 with a degree in Literature and Languages. Over the next 10 years, Larkin continued to sharpen his poetic lines while working as a Librarian at a number of universities in both England and Ireland before accepting in 1955 a library post at the University of Hull in northeastern England, where he would remain for more than 30 years. It was shortly after starting at the University of Hull that his collection of poems The Less Deceived was published to wide admiration.

Larkin was a methodical poet, carefully drafting and redrafting lines. It would be 10 years before his next collection, The Whitsun Weddings, appeared. That collection won the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, awarded to the outstanding work of poetry published in the United Kingdom. Its past winners included W. H. Auden, Robert Graves, and then Poet Laureate John Betjeman. It would be another decade before Larkin’s next (and last) collection of poetry appeared, the critically acclaimed High Windows, which included “The Explosion.” On the strength of that collection, when Betjeman died in 1984, Larkin was offered the Poet Laureateship, which he declined. Retiring by nature, he feared the celebrity the post involved. Just a year later, Larkin was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. During his hospitalization, Larkin was notified he had been awarded the Order of the Companion of Honor, a lifetime achievement award presented by the Queen for contributions in the arts, an honor considered second only to knighthood. Larkin died just weeks later, on 2 December 1985.

Poem Text

Larkin, Philip. “The Explosion.” 1974. Allpoetry.com.

Summary

The poem is a narrative told in three parts: first, it recounts the men heading off to another day in the mines (Stanzas 1-4); then, there is the underground explosion itself (Stanza 5); and the poem closes with the families of the dead gathering in a memorial service (Stanzas 6-8).

In the opening four stanzas, the poet records the men going off to the mines. Bearded and laughing, indulging one last pipe before they arrive at the mine, they are fathers and brothers, neighbors and friends; they call each other by familiar nicknames as they walk down the lane through town toward the mine, past the familiar slagheaps speckled in the sun. It is another unremarkable morning, and the men, in their heavy mining boots, jostle each other in fun. There is no reason to suspect today will be any different—the reader is alerted only by the opening line “The day of the explosion” (Line 1). Going to work in the mines is routine for these men. Impulsively, one of the miners chases after a rabbit, which quickly outruns him. He returns, however, with a “nest of lark’s eggs” (Line 8) that he happens on. After showing the eggs to his friends, he replaces the nest carefully back into the high grass.

In Stanza 5, we are given a muted account of the underground explosion. There is no drama, no you-are-there documentary feel; in fact, the poem records only the sudden inexplicable shudder at noontime of the ground above the catastrophic explosion itself. Cows feel the tremor and momentarily stop chewing their cud, puzzled over the odd stirring. Plumes of smoke emanating from the mine entrance momentarily scarf the sun, leaving the open fields “heat-hazed” and “dimmed” (Line 15). The muffled sun and the weird tremor, however, are the only evidence of the hell below.

Stanza 6, set in italics, moves to the memorial service itself. “The dead go on before us” (Line 16), echoing the comforting rhetoric of a typical Christian funeral service. It is the message of consolation that the survivors expect to hear. The dead, they are reassured, are sitting now in “God’s house” (Line 17), comfortable, safe, and happy until those who have survived them will reunite with them. Then, they shall see the dead “face to face” (Line 18), their features as “plain as lettering” on the walls “in the chapels” (Line 19). Encouraged by the comforting words, the wives gathered at the service momentarily see the faces of their lost husbands in their minds, faces that seem now majestic, much “larger than in life” (Line 22), magnified by their elevation into heaven. In death, the miners seem far more important than they ever were in life as working-class individuals, their bodies now seem gifted with the same dignity and import of faces on coins; in death, they are illuminated as if by the sun itself.

The poem closes with a single spare image: the same lark’s nest disturbed previously by one of the miners that morning. The eggs have survived, unbroken and intact.