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Father’s Day; Church Going

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Dear Lorin:
Father’s Day is coming up, and this year I want to get my dad something he’ll actually read. The last three books I am certain he has read are: something by George Pelecanos,
Lush Life by Richard Price, and certainly something by Sue Grafton. What would be something different, but not too different?
Best,
Bryant

Bryant? My long-lost half-brother? Can it really be you?

On the theory that our fathers are the same person, I would recommend Pete Dexter, Scott Spencer, the oft-mentioned-in-this-column Elmore Leonard, and maybe most of all The Main, by Trevanian, about which I remember almost nothing except that Dad lent it to me once when I was home sick and said it was really good. (And that I liked it, too.)

Dear Paris Review,
I have been struggling to understand the final stanza of Philip Larkin’s “Church Going” for a month or so. The more I think about it, the more I doubt my thoughts. Could someone please help give an explication of the stanza? I’m having problems answering bigger and smaller questions—for example, why is the air “blent”? Who is recognizing “our compulsions”? And why are they “robed as destinies”? And by whom are they robed? And to what is “that” referring in the line “that much can never be obsolete”? The final two lines baffle me as well. I’m sorry. Usually I am a very good close reader, but I have failed with this one. Please help. —Caroline Grey

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

P.S. It wouldn’t hurt to remind your readers how to read poetry well. Consider this a general service, too.

Thank you for sending me back to “Church Going.” I enjoyed rereading it and thinking about it again. I’m afraid these (very rudimentary, very literal-minded) answers will have occurred to you, but here is where I’d start:

1) The air is blended in the sense that it holds, in solution, a mixture of smells and associations (see stanza five). But why “blent”? Why such an archaic, literary word? At the very beginning of the poem, when the speaker walks into the church, he finds a “tense, musty, unignorable silence / Brewed God knows how long.” (Get it, God knows?) By the end of the poem, that defensive, jokey tone is gone. The speaker is trying to make his language live up to the dignity he sees in the church. That’s how it strikes me, anyway.

(Here and throughout, Larkin makes a big deal of the church as container. He starts off by wondering about the roof, how old it is and whether it’s in good repair. He associates the end of “superstition” with the caving-in of the roof, when all that’s left is “Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky.” He calls the church a “special shell,” and so on.)

2) Who is recognizing our compulsions? Yes. Exactly. I think this question goes straight to the heart of the poem. If there is no one in the church (no God, no clergy, no belief, no superstition), then there is no one to recognize our compulsions. There is no one to call them sins and forgive them. No one to take them seriously. No promise that we will be rewarded or punished for what we do or given a “destiny” that is special to ourselves.

3) Why “robed”? We tend to think of robes as royal or ceremonial garments and as symbols of redemption: “Lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9-10). To take our compulsions (a quasimedical term borrowed from psychiatry) and robe them as destinies is to … well, you can decide what that might mean, no?

4) By “that much,” I think Larkin means the feeling that the church is “a serious house on serious earth.” In the last lines of the poem he tries to explain this feeling—or at least say where it comes from.

Again, these are just places you might start. My next question would probably have to do with the tone of that last stanza. Is there something not quite serious about that line “A serious house on serious earth it is”? Is there something wishful, and ironic, about “blent”? And so on. Another reader might ask how much the last lines had to do with churches and how much with poems about churches. Both readers would be asking questions, not just about what’s on the page, but about their own biases and interests and … compulsions.

So, as for your most general question—how to read poetry well—I have no idea, except to pay attention to the specific words on the page, and the implied tone of voice, and to think about what you read. Just what you’re doing. It sounds childish to say, but one thing I like about poems is that you are allowed to stare at them, and think about them, for as long as you like. In this sense, they resemble slow movies, or portraits, or nudes, or most of what we think of as art: poems give you permission to pay attention to a degree that would be rude or embarrassing face to face with, for example, a person.

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