I'm so happy I found this recording. It's just the way I always imagined it would be written. Not too rushed, good pauses at the right times, and not angry, just resigned. I just love it.
@@aclark903even if that were the case, it’s still man handing on misery to man, regardless of if it’s your parent or a complete stranger. This world is evil, and none of us can do much of anything about it now. People will keep finding ways to make others miserable unless we as people at least BE the good. You’ll find that there are many here that won’t stop until everyone is just as miserable as they are, because misery loves company. So why should our future generations suffer the same fate that we did?
@@AlastorAltruistGaming The world isn't evil, but people are. Agnostics like Larkin reject #originalsin, but #JohnMilton had more insight into the human condition..
Count Olaf saying this in the final book of A Series of Unfortunate Events was so amazing, ranging from the subversive parting-shot of his final line in the series hiding the word "Fuck" in a kid's book to the way it summarizes the whole series. It was a brilliant, brilliant decision and I love it.
Ik I’m really late on this one, but watching the Netflix series & seeing the exact same final stanza uttered by Olaf while also seeing him die made me cry to bloody bits, because it changed my perspective on how Olaf had his life transformed via villainy. The one good deed, the one straw that broke the camel’s back (that being rescuing Kit), it may not have outnumbered all the terrible he committed, but he at least redeemed himself while he still had mere seconds left to live.
This is the best work of literature of all time, in any language, that has ever been written by man. If no one ever had kids, mankind would not exist. Since life is nothing but merciless, pitiless, unflagging, unebbing, implacable, inexorable, inevitable, invariable, immutable, ineluctable, everlasting pain, discomfort, boredom, toil, drudgery, disappointment, disillusionment, disenchantment, suffering, agony, death and despair, the world would be better if people did not exist. Keep your pants pulled up.
I want to learn this poem, so the next time someone asks if I'm going to have a child I can recite it to them so they'll get the damned point. My mother screwed me up badly--I didn't realize that she had or why she did until last November when she admitted the truth about her past. I won't have a child, period. I refuse to screw someone else up.
My boyfriend wants to have kids so he can basically try and undo how his parents fucked him up. But it doesn’t really work that way does it? It won’t fix him, he’ll just pass his problems on to the next generation...
@@Emiliapocalypse i’d suggest your boyfriend to go through therapy before anything, i don’t believe he should have kids for the sole purpose of undoing how his parents fucked him up. since you mentioned that it’s to ‘fix him’, it’s kinda like using your kids to better yourself rather than to properly care for them, which is not very good. idk for sure though since idk the whole situation. hope things work out for you guys!
This be the Query I heard your words, and felt the same. Helped me to hear them, one lone day. But you left here before I came. And I pondered just, what I'd say. True you were my senior writer. Touched far more than I ever will. Our words act as soul igniters, So I've a question for you still; "If man hands misery to man, And our pains and sins are to stay, Could hands not reach to close that span, And help pull us all from that gray?"
Yes it is. It's a BBC recording: " Four Poets of the 20th Century Reading Their Own Works." It's Philip Larkin. I still have the cassette tape I bought!
Even as someone who wants to have kids I still think this is an excellent poem. Written in iambic pentameter and with each line having 8 syllables and the fact that he managed to show sympathy for the bad parents in the poem as well. There's a lot to this poem, a lot of effort that so many poems don't have.
Everyone's favourite piece of genial misanthropy by everyone's favourite Vic Reeves lookalike. This isn't actually among Larkin's best poems (those would be High Windows and Aubade), but I can't think of any other memorable opening lines in any published poem by anybody since.
I love this poem. I see it as a necessary and timely (1971?) reaction to the filthy and anachronistic human ideology that bearing children is something that "everyone JUST GETS to do." Fuck all the people who thoughtlessly reproduce. Or thoughtlessly do any act which, in fact, demands immense thought and premeditation. The unexamined life is kiln candy.
Yes it is. It's a BBC recording: " Four Poets of the 20th Century Reading Their Own Works." It's Philip Larkin. I still have the cassette tape I bought!
PICK YOURSELF UP, LARKIN Philip Larkin my old mate You ́re giving up, upon our fate, We can decide what happens next it's up to you, you write your text Your mom and dad may through with shit But you can catch and bury every bit The shit will fertilize your ground For you to grow a different sound
Out of all the poems (in four different languages!) that I've learned by heart at school, this is the only one that I can still recite in its entirety. I wonder if that's because its message actually struck a chord in me, or just because it's the only one that has the word "fuck" in it ;)
Some say the world will end in fire Some say in ice: From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of Hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. #RobertFrost
This really makes me think about how Man is a habitable and impressionable creature in all reality.If when you're a kid or in your teens(Or even if you're "grown-up"),you say you don't see the point in getting married,having kids and settling down,you're laughed at.If you ask why the people you told it to are laughing,they'll tell you not to be silly."Everyone settles down and raises a family."But why?"Because it's just what people do."That's mankind.Habitable.Impressionable.Through and through.
@RunsWithWeasels The worst thing is parents who make stupid decisions against your wishes, or deny you your own choices, which turn your life into a trainwreck and then act as if its nothing to do with them. Controlling parents like being in charge but don't take responsibility for any of their mistakes, they leave you to clean it up.
Brutally pessimistic: to copulate and thereby create a person is identified with ruining that person's life. This state of affairs, moreover, is tragic. "Get out as early as you can"? By that point it is too late.
Brutally pessimistic but true, Chris McCandless is a sad but viable example of this. I can remember being as young as 8 years old holding a kitchen knife to my stomach in front of my parents because I was so tired of the domestic abuse I had to witness between them as a young child. How sad that I remember it, but they seem to have no recollection of that night. The axe forgets what the tree remembers. The yearning to get away from all of the haunting experiences endured by “child me” feels all too familiar for it to not have some kind of truth to this poem.
I love this poem, the older I the more it makes sense, my father introduced it to me, I like idea of being filled up with problems and the way 'it deepens like coastal shelf,' and the warning that I should have heeded! Four kids later!!!! It thrills me every time such irony. A favourite.
If i have one basic rule of parenting, and in life in general, it's learn both how to be and how not to be from the people around you, and apply those lessons. Easier said than done.
@charliesechos Society berates absent parents but controlling parents are actually more dangerous. The neglected child can define his/her own future, whereas a controlling mother will ruthlessly sabotage your social life and prevent you from defining yourself and living your own life, often stealing years, even decades, from what should have been your life. When parents do that, they don't "mean well", they do it out of selfishness.
I encountered this Poem a while back I xeroxed it and have a copy hanging on my wall it's been there quit a few years now. I even sent a copy to my mother and siblings. check out the book "Toxic Parents"
The line is actually "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." A lot of his work was pretty straight-forward, and some pieces were almost vulgar without actually being vulgar.
Not the most sensational line from this wonderfully sensational poem, but somehow this is what always gets me laughing out loud: "...fools in old-style hats and coats..." those words are just perfectly fucking hilarious. philip larkin may have been an asshole, but he was also blindingly brilliant, and funny as all hell.
As always, Larkin tells it like it is. A simple and direct verse of great power. But is this a poem of personal failure? While I agree with the premises, I question the conclusions. Should we be defeated by inherited sin? Is not the purpose of life, its great challenge, to learn from our primogenitors' mistakes, and try to overcome them, and create a better world for our progeny? Can old faults be expiated by love for the new? Are we inevitably trapped in a quagmire of cultural and genetic karma which, like quicksand, sucks us in further the more we struggle against it. Following the quicksand simile, it seems that Larkin has resigned himself to cruel fate, and ceased to struggle with a view to making the best of a bad lot. Can you hear the subtle but telling hint of bitterness permeating his voice? However, I applaud Larkin for his courage and perspicacity in publishing this potent poem. I'm sure that he could provide acute and sapient ripostes to the above points, or write another equally striking poem developing these points. As ever, he remains a favourite poet.
Surprised that Larkin wrote "and don't have any kids yourself" when "and don't have kids yourself" seems to scan so much better and yet conveys the same meaning.
You could see it that way. Poems can be read differently. A religious person, which I'm not, could read 'faults' as inherited Sin. That's the beauty of poetry.
we were learning about Shakespeare and my teacher randomly started talking about this guy and recited it to us our whole class cracked up (when i was in year 8)
Poetry is a Soul...No one can destroy. Poetry is a Faith...No one can close its gate. Poetry is a Music...Echoes from planets Poetry has a rhyme...No on can slay it at any time... Poetry can heal pains...learn one stanza and repeat Replacing painkillers that has side effects. From my poetry collections... "Carve Poetry Into Your Psyche" (2014) Sylva~MD~POETRY
@ukulazy It is widely considered by many as having that double meaning, yes. The "May not mean to, but they do" could possibly allude to unplanned pregnancy as well.
it was my ma who introduced me to the poem at a time when i was rebelling against everyone and anyone, esp her lol, he could have put a bit of emotion into the reading dont you think, its very boring here, but a wonderful poem
I'm so happy I found this recording. It's just the way I always imagined it would be written. Not too rushed, good pauses at the right times, and not angry, just resigned. I just love it.
It's interesting to hear Sylvia Plath read. it wasn't the voice or intonation I expected.
This be the truth.
Nah. It's funny but it is only half true. It's an overly cynical view of parenting.
@@aclark903even if that were the case, it’s still man handing on misery to man, regardless of if it’s your parent or a complete stranger. This world is evil, and none of us can do much of anything about it now. People will keep finding ways to make others miserable unless we as people at least BE the good. You’ll find that there are many here that won’t stop until everyone is just as miserable as they are, because misery loves company. So why should our future generations suffer the same fate that we did?
@@AlastorAltruistGaming The world isn't evil, but people are. Agnostics like Larkin reject #originalsin, but #JohnMilton had more insight into the human condition..
It isn't funny and completely true.
I found this in a book called "Childrens best loved poems". I'm not joking. It's an amazing poem though.
Really?! Link?
‘Man hands on misery to man’. Probably one of the best lines of the 20th century.
Being a schoolboy in the early 70’s this was almost mandatory to know and recite as often as possible.
Count Olaf saying this in the final book of A Series of Unfortunate Events was so amazing, ranging from the subversive parting-shot of his final line in the series hiding the word "Fuck" in a kid's book to the way it summarizes the whole series.
It was a brilliant, brilliant decision and I love it.
Ik I’m really late on this one, but watching the Netflix series & seeing the exact same final stanza uttered by Olaf while also seeing him die made me cry to bloody bits, because it changed my perspective on how Olaf had his life transformed via villainy. The one good deed, the one straw that broke the camel’s back (that being rescuing Kit), it may not have outnumbered all the terrible he committed, but he at least redeemed himself while he still had mere seconds left to live.
I have heard other people recite this poem, but Larkin's reading of it is by far the most evocative.
If I could give this video, and this poem, a thousand 'Likes,' I'd do so in a heartbeart.
This is the best work of literature of all time, in any language, that has ever been written by man.
If no one ever had kids, mankind would not exist. Since life is nothing but merciless, pitiless, unflagging, unebbing, implacable, inexorable, inevitable, invariable, immutable, ineluctable, everlasting pain, discomfort, boredom, toil, drudgery, disappointment, disillusionment, disenchantment, suffering, agony, death and despair, the world would be better if people did not exist.
Keep your pants pulled up.
Mark, can you tone down your relentless positivity just a tad? 🤔
Based
I want to learn this poem, so the next time someone asks if I'm going to have a child I can recite it to them so they'll get the damned point. My mother screwed me up badly--I didn't realize that she had or why she did until last November when she admitted the truth about her past. I won't have a child, period. I refuse to screw someone else up.
I had this opportunity at a family Christmas party with one of my parents present and took it. Do not regret it at all.
I hear you!
So, here 9 years later. Have you had children?
My boyfriend wants to have kids so he can basically try and undo how his parents fucked him up. But it doesn’t really work that way does it? It won’t fix him, he’ll just pass his problems on to the next generation...
@@Emiliapocalypse i’d suggest your boyfriend to go through therapy before anything, i don’t believe he should have kids for the sole purpose of undoing how his parents fucked him up. since you mentioned that it’s to ‘fix him’, it’s kinda like using your kids to better yourself rather than to properly care for them, which is not very good. idk for sure though since idk the whole situation. hope things work out for you guys!
This be the Query
I heard your words, and felt the same.
Helped me to hear them, one lone day.
But you left here before I came.
And I pondered just, what I'd say.
True you were my senior writer.
Touched far more than I ever will.
Our words act as soul igniters,
So I've a question for you still;
"If man hands misery to man,
And our pains and sins are to stay,
Could hands not reach to close that span,
And help pull us all from that gray?"
The cycle of trauma ends with me and so does the family tree
I prefer "This line ends with me"
Absolutely Based
Yep, same here too.
Same here.
Yes it is. It's a BBC recording: " Four Poets of the 20th Century Reading Their Own Works."
It's Philip Larkin. I still have the cassette tape I bought!
best & existentially truest of all time. it's so good & so short!!
'man hands on misery to man / it deepens like a coastal shelf' just unbelievable
Even as someone who wants to have kids I still think this is an excellent poem. Written in iambic pentameter and with each line having 8 syllables and the fact that he managed to show sympathy for the bad parents in the poem as well. There's a lot to this poem, a lot of effort that so many poems don't have.
Words to live by
this poem was CBT for me, when I was at school, made me realise a few things at a young age, and I applied all the advice.
Everyone's favourite piece of genial misanthropy by everyone's favourite Vic Reeves lookalike. This isn't actually among Larkin's best poems (those would be High Windows and Aubade), but I can't think of any other memorable opening lines in any published poem by anybody since.
Yes, High Windows is superb. The end is shattering. Aubade is wonderful, very evocative. It is a masterpiece. Great choices 👍🏼
I love this poem. I see it as a necessary and timely (1971?) reaction to the filthy and anachronistic human ideology that bearing children is something that "everyone JUST GETS to do." Fuck all the people who thoughtlessly reproduce. Or thoughtlessly do any act which, in fact, demands immense thought and premeditation. The unexamined life is kiln candy.
this is my favorite poem yet
Yes it is. It's a BBC recording: " Four Poets of the 20th Century Reading Their Own Works."
It's Philip Larkin. I still have the cassette tape I bought!
My parents have disgustingly fought in front of me for the thousandth time just now and I’m listening to this wishing to be dead.
I hope you’re ok. But if you’re not, I hope you have been able to get away from these people.
well done! lol still chuckling. Enjoying some of the comments too, ty for sharing.
PICK YOURSELF UP, LARKIN
Philip Larkin my old mate
You ́re giving up, upon our fate,
We can decide what happens next
it's up to you, you write your text
Your mom and dad may through with shit
But you can catch and bury every bit
The shit will fertilize your ground
For you to grow a different sound
Beautiful and 100% true. Thank you.
Thanks! Dar feelings were rising. This made evrything clear and even funny.
Happy Father's Day!
Great poem.
I found this in a childrens poem book a while back. childrens best loved poems.
Out of all the poems (in four different languages!) that I've learned by heart at school, this is the only one that I can still recite in its entirety. I wonder if that's because its message actually struck a chord in me, or just because it's the only one that has the word "fuck" in it ;)
Some say the world will end in fire
Some say in ice:
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of Hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
#RobertFrost
Maybe because it is short?
Best thing on youtube, ty
Fantastic.
a classic from one of our gr8test poets :)
Jesus Larkin was so right....
Oh, so true. Sadly...
This really makes me think about how Man is a habitable and impressionable creature in all reality.If when you're a kid or in your teens(Or even if you're "grown-up"),you say you don't see the point in getting married,having kids and settling down,you're laughed at.If you ask why the people you told it to are laughing,they'll tell you not to be silly."Everyone settles down and raises a family."But why?"Because it's just what people do."That's mankind.Habitable.Impressionable.Through and through.
Either choice is valid.
It is Larkin reading -
@RunsWithWeasels The worst thing is parents who make stupid decisions against your wishes, or deny you your own choices, which turn your life into a trainwreck and then act as if its nothing to do with them. Controlling parents like being in charge but don't take responsibility for any of their mistakes, they leave you to clean it up.
Larkin telling us how he sees it. Still quite shocking.
Don't feel that way. Life has some good bits and some bad bits. Keep on fighting the bastards.
+gabigowriel The birth of nihilist, a poetic sight of misery and happiness.
Actually, this isn’t how he sees it. It’s not auto-biographical.
"Toxic Parents" by Dr. Susan Forward
Amen Philip Larkin
Brutally pessimistic: to copulate and thereby create a person is identified with ruining that person's life. This state of affairs, moreover, is tragic. "Get out as early as you can"? By that point it is too late.
Brutally pessimistic but true, Chris McCandless is a sad but viable example of this. I can remember being as young as 8 years old holding a kitchen knife to my stomach in front of my parents because I was so tired of the domestic abuse I had to witness between them as a young child. How sad that I remember it, but they seem to have no recollection of that night. The axe forgets what the tree remembers. The yearning to get away from all of the haunting experiences endured by “child me” feels all too familiar for it to not have some kind of truth to this poem.
"Get out" probably means "die" here.
@@francisdec1615 Right-but you've already been "fucked up," so the time for "getting out" has passed.
Damn...this is powerful
I love this poem, the older I the more it makes sense, my father introduced it to me, I like idea of being filled up with problems and the way 'it deepens like coastal shelf,' and the warning that I should have heeded! Four kids later!!!! It thrills me every time such irony. A favourite.
It's definitely Philip Larkin :)
If i have one basic rule of parenting, and in life in general, it's learn both how to be and how not to be from the people around you, and apply those lessons. Easier said than done.
Was JUST about to comment that!
@charliesechos Society berates absent parents but controlling parents are actually more dangerous. The neglected child can define his/her own future, whereas a controlling mother will ruthlessly sabotage your social life and prevent you from defining yourself and living your own life, often stealing years, even decades, from what should have been your life. When parents do that, they don't "mean well", they do it out of selfishness.
I encountered this Poem a while back I xeroxed it and have a copy hanging on my wall it's been there quit a few years now. I even sent a copy to my mother and siblings. check out the book "Toxic Parents"
The line is actually "They fuck you up, your mum and dad." A lot of his work was pretty straight-forward, and some pieces were almost vulgar without actually being vulgar.
Excellent.
"This" be the verse.
Philip Larkin did have some good points with this poem.
Not the most sensational line from this wonderfully sensational poem, but somehow this is what always gets me laughing out loud: "...fools in old-style hats and coats..." those words are just perfectly fucking hilarious. philip larkin may have been an asshole, but he was also blindingly brilliant, and funny as all hell.
I used to live 10 minutes bike ride from where he lived in Hull and I never knew.
As always, Larkin tells it like it is. A simple and direct verse of great power. But is this a poem of personal failure? While I agree with the premises, I question the conclusions. Should we be defeated by inherited sin? Is not the purpose of life, its great challenge, to learn from our primogenitors' mistakes, and try to overcome them, and create a better world for our progeny? Can old faults be expiated by love for the new? Are we inevitably trapped in a quagmire of cultural and genetic karma which, like quicksand, sucks us in further the more we struggle against it. Following the quicksand simile, it seems that Larkin has resigned himself to cruel fate, and ceased to struggle with a view to making the best of a bad lot. Can you hear the subtle but telling hint of bitterness permeating his voice?
However, I applaud Larkin for his courage and perspicacity in publishing this potent poem. I'm sure that he could provide acute and sapient ripostes to the above points, or write another equally striking poem developing these points.
As ever, he remains a favourite poet.
Your insight has helped me enormously with my English A level coursework, thank you!
To follow this poem's tragic trace
Would mean the end of our rapid race!
yes it is.
Surprised that Larkin wrote "and don't have any kids yourself" when "and don't have kids yourself" seems to scan so much better and yet conveys the same meaning.
@ukulazy Hello there. No, this is not a pun or an idiom or wordplay. It means that ones parents are responsible for the psyche.
TRUTH
CORRECT!😢
I know. It's a joke.
I only got here cause my homework
Yeah same
The first thing i thought of when I heard this was count olaf of the series of unfortunate events. He recited the last verse in the last book
@biologias3 It was supposed to be humorous. My dad always told people "Don't get married." Tis for laughs.
You could see it that way. Poems can be read differently. A religious person, which I'm not, could read 'faults' as inherited Sin. That's the beauty of poetry.
bravo
@mousegeek and thats the way its always been and always will be.
Olaf?
He's gone, Sunny. He's dead.
#IHATP
Starman David Bowie The definitive biography, by Paul Trynka p.10
we were learning about Shakespeare and my teacher randomly started talking about this guy and recited it to us our whole class cracked up (when i was in year 8)
Bars
This is the message of Turning Red
This was darker then any gory image
I've never interpreted it like that but who's to say :-)
time to be normal about this again,,,
2020
then be glad for your homework
Poetry is a Soul...No one can destroy.
Poetry is a Faith...No one can close its gate.
Poetry is a Music...Echoes from planets
Poetry has a rhyme...No on can slay it at any time...
Poetry can heal pains...learn one stanza and repeat
Replacing painkillers that has side effects.
From my poetry collections...
"Carve Poetry Into Your Psyche" (2014)
Sylva~MD~POETRY
enjoy reading my poem...
thank you ...
@ukulazy Absolutely not ! Larkin doesn't do trite pun.
Yep...by your interpretation, they didn't mean to have you. but they did...
@mousegeek No.
Do you know who owns the rights to this recording?
I know it says it is read by Larkin himself but he sounds an awful lot like Bill Nighy.
@ukulazy It is widely considered by many as having that double meaning, yes. The "May not mean to, but they do" could possibly allude to unplanned pregnancy as well.
did i seriously just read that?
@MrNeilSuper --Sadly, I wish I could honestly say that.
It really boils down to one line: "Man hands on misery to man." The rest is lagniappe.
Because of this poem people have stopped having kids. That's some powerful shit.
MAKE ANTINATALISM GREAT!
@mousegeek I'm to say
that's how i explained to my fiane why i don't want to have kids. she agreed.
UA-cam comments Jesus fucking Christ! I
dammit larking... or should i say raishan
Deeply cynical
The sheer amount of fedora in this comment section
This isn't Larkin
It is: it is from the bbc recording: four poets from th 20th century reading their own works
it was my ma who introduced me to the poem at a time when i was rebelling against everyone and anyone, esp her lol, he could have put a bit of emotion into the reading dont you think, its very boring here, but a wonderful poem