Annus Mirabilis Means Wonderful Year

Philip Larkin's "Annus Mirabilis" caught my attention because it is rhythmically pleasing. This poem enforces rhyme as much as possible. It uses a simple ABBAB pattern. The author uses an array of poetic techniques as seen here in the first stanza:

Sexual intercourse began

In nineteen sixty-three

(Which was rather late for me) -

Between the end of the Chatterly ban

And the Beatles' first LP. 

It is clear that there is end rhymes. There is also assonance with the repetition of the hard ee sound within nineteen, three, me, between, Beatles and LP. There is also internal rhyme that coincides with the assonance that is seen within the stanza. 

What immediately caught my attention to the poem was first the title "Annus Mirabilis".  I had no idea what it meant so I looked up the meaning. Annus Mirabilis is a Latin phrase that means wonderful year. After getting past the title the first line caught my attention. It interested me why the author would use the term sexual intercourse rather than something less scientific or formal. There is an obvious denotation that comes with the term sexual intercourse, but the connotation is what gets me. The connotation of sexual intercourse really gets the author's point across. It's awkward, it feels awkward to say it and it leaves almost an unsettling feeling within you, but that's the point. The author is discussing having sex for the first time which he conveys his own experience as being awkward by the connotation of a single phrase. This just goes to show the complexity that poetry truly has.