"This Be the Worse"

Philip Larkin

This Be the Man?

Photograph by Philip Sayer

Cover of Required Writing

(Image from The Philip Larkin Society)

When the British poet Philip Larkin published his unprintable poem "This Be the Verse" in the August 1971 issue of the New Humanist, he probably didn't foresee how widely, even colloquially, it would come to be quoted despite (or perhaps because of) containing one of the seven dirty words that you can never say on television.

I mean the f-word.

Pan forward to Korea, 2007. Yesterday, my daughter -- who has only recently turned eleven -- mentioned the movie Die Hard. Now, I happen to like that 1988 action film, but I was surprised that my daughter had heard of it.

"You've heard of the film?" I asked.

"I've seen it," she replied.

I looked at her. "You've seen it?"

"Yes."

"The Bruce Willis movie?" I checked.

She looked puzzled, so I asked, "Was there a lot of shooting?"

"Yes."

"Where did you see it?"

"In school. Our teacher showed it."

I sat there astounded, wondering, What could her teacher have been thinking? I then went to my wife and told her:

"Sun-Ae, you need to speak to Sa-Rah's teacher. He showed the film Die Hard to his fifth-grade class. It's a film with a lot of violence and a lot of bad language. It's completely inappropriate for children. If I recall, it was rated R, which means that you can't see it without a parent if you're under 17."

I added, "The main character, played by Bruce Willis, uses the f-word a lot."

Sun-Ae didn't specifically say that she'd speak with Sa-Rah's teacher, but she agreed with me about the film being inappropriate for children:

"A lot of Koreans have no sense of what movies children should be allowed to see. The kids probably see the same film at home on DVD."

She's right . . . which doesn't make it right.

But getting back to Larkin . . . I don't blame him for popularizing the f-word (which I admit also escapes my lips from time to time), but his poem "The Be the Verse" serves as a convenient postillion upon which to vent my paternal wrath.

This Be the Worse

When Philip Larkin wrote, that cad,
In nineteen-seventy-f*cking-two,
He fouled me with the fault he had
Of saying well what isn't true.

But he was f*cked up in his turn
From closely cultivating oats
That he had wildly sown to learn
What he could then shove down our throats.

"Man hands on misery to man"?
His own sits there upon my shelf.
"Get out as early as you can"?
At least he had no kids himself.

No kids. That's one thing in his favor . . . and (whinging aside) I also happen to like his poem. It's catchy.

Which doesn't make it right...