Everyone Felt the Same

DISCLAIMER: I have the third edition so my poems may not be the same as some of you guys’. Here’s a link to the poem I’m analyzing: http://www.wussu.com/poems/plam.htm .

“Annus Mirabilis” (I discovered after a quick Google search) means “a remarkable year”, which is exactly what Phillip Larkin describes in his poem of the same name. In it he depicts his sexual awakening in the year of 1963 in such few words, but the reader is still able to feel the joy, shame, and relief that Larkin experienced at this time in his life. The first stanza reads, “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.” (1-6) Already, we have an idea not only of what the author’s life was like, but also what time the poem takes place. These few lines, with their bouncy, lilting end rhymes, set an exact period of time and how late the author’s sexual awakening was in his life (with further research on Larkin, I found he was forty-one in 1963). This lighthearted rhythm carries throughout the poem, as the next stanza reads, “Up till then there’d only been / a sort of bargaining, / A wrangle for a ring, / A shame that started at sixteen / And spread to everything.” (7-11) Once again, though dealing with a heavy topic; his struggle with his sexuality; Larkin’s cheery voice makes it read like a children’s book. The light end rhymes show that even though this was clearly a dark time in his life, he is past it, and that this poem now serves as a reflection on something he should not be ashamed of. He proceeds, “Then all at once the quarrel sank: / Everyone felt the same, / And every life became / A brilliant breaking of the bank, / A quite unlosable game.” (12-15) Here Larkin’s voice practically makes the relief tangible for his audience, not only with his rhyme, but with his word choice as well. Words like “sank”, “brilliant”, and “unlosable” effectively paint a picture of just how magnificent it was for him, and many others, to experience such a sexual awakening and shed whatever shame they had felt before. Larkin then uses repetition by reciting the first stanza again at the close of the poem. This serves as a truly brilliant way of showing just how remarkable his annus mirabilis was, and how it ended preceding years of shame in a most beautiful way.