Point of View

“This Be The Verse” pointedly employs the second-person point of view, opening with “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” (1) and closing with “And don’t have any kids yourself” (12). In between, the speaker uses the third-person to describe what “They” (2), meaning your parents, do, as well as what “they” (5) had done to them. By framing the poem with second-person declarations and commands, Larkin makes a bet that the experience of childhood he describes will directly resonate with whomever finds themself in the place of his interlocutor. The poem’s enormous success suggests that Larkin’s bet paid off — he managed to capture a universal lesson of life, that “Man hands on misery to man” (9) in a way that recalls the build-up of a continental shelf.

The poem’s perspective slightly shifts in the final quatrain, underscoring the speaker’s sardonic nature. Lines 1-...