The Explosion (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Philip Larkin
- First Published: 1974
- Type of Work: Pastoral
- Genres: Poetry, Pastoral
- Subjects: Class consciousness, England or English people, Accidents, Death or dying, Working class, Mines, miners, or mining, Explosions or explosives
The Poem
“The Explosion” is a short poem of twenty-five lines made up of eight unrhymed tercets and a final, isolated one-line stanza. It is written in trochaic tetrameter with a number of metrical variations and substitutions. The speaker of the poem is an observer and commentator on the crucial event of the poem, an explosion at a mine. The language is clearly that of a speaker who is more highly educated than the working-class people that the poem represents. He is not involved in their lives but attempts to render their nature and experience as fully and truthfully as...
[The entire page is 1549 words long]
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