A Study of Blogging Habits

     Today for my English class we were assigned a couple poems to analyze and answer questions for. Of these, one poem really stuck out to me. It is called A Study of Reading Habits by Philip Larkin (1922-1985). This poem was more or less pretty interesting, and the imagery it supplied, as well as the message it displayed at the end were very humorous. Here, read it for yourself real quick:

When getting my nose in a book

Cured most things short of school,

It was worth ruining my eyes

To know I could still keep cool,

And deal out the old right hook

To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,

Evil was just my lark:

Me and my cloak and fangs

Had ripping times in the dark.

The women I clubbed with sex!

I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude

Who lets the girl down before

The hero arrives, the chap

Who's yellow and keeps the store,

Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:

Books are a load of crap.

     Well. That was certainly an adventure. First of all I am going to define some words I didn't recognize, and maybe you readers didn't quite recognize either.

Lark - A bird who's song is delivered in flight
Meringues - A type of light and fluffy desert
Stewed - Drunk

     Anyways, this poem seemed really interesting to me, as I connected to it as an avid reader. Each stanza describes a period in the speakers life; the first, describing his life as a child. The speaker usually felt the cure for most ills was reading (besides school of course), and that this activity he considered fun was worth ruining his eyes for. The next three lines may describe the kinds of books he is reading: old adventure books in which the hero is constantly beating up the villain and his henchmen. The speaker connects with this, and imagines himself in the same situation.
     The next stanza describes his life as an adult. Due to all his reading as a kid, he has to wear some large glasses just to see with his damaged vision. He constantly makes adventures into the night, doing the dirty deed with women and "breaking" them like fragile deserts. This could also possibly describe the literature he was into at this age; thrilling suspense novels, set in dark places with which the heroes may have several different types of adventures.
     Finally, the last stanza describes him as an old man. He identifies with the side characters of books, rather than the main protagonist; the character who lets the girl down, maybe betraying her, just before the brave hero arrives, or the "yellow" (scared) shopkeeper who stays in hiding if he was being held up. Suddenly, the speaker realizes this life is all too familiar, and suggest one simple thing to fix that: to get madly drunk.
     "Books are a load of crap" he describes. His entire life he lived through the characters of a book, and at the end of his life he realized that this may not have been a good idea, although he only realized this when it was too late.
    Overall, as I stated previously, this was a pretty interesting poem. The humor was spot-on, and it kept me interested. The way the speaker describes the characters he relates to and how he is using these characteristics inside of his own life is also pretty humorous. It took me a couple reads to get it, but when I finally did, it made a lot of sense.


I tried to write this blog piece six times, before I was satisfied with this result. Please enjoy it for my own sanity.
Blogging is a load of crap.

(Word Count: 629 words)