The Explosion

When I first read this poem, I thought it was Apocalyptic. The diction in the poem creates and image of Armageddon. Larkin's use of the words "explosion," "shadows," "tremor," "heat-dazed," and "dimmed" illustrate what the Apocalypse might look like and what I imagine it to be. However, when I learned that the word "pithead" meant the entrance to a mine and the word "pitboots" were miners boots and the Larkin wrote this poem after watching a documentary about miners and being fascinated by it, my paradigm of the poem shifted. The poem is not about the Apocalypse but rather mining, and each stanza discusses different aspects of mining. For example, the first stanza illustrates an explosion in the mine, the second stanza the miners after a day of work, and so on. What struck me the most was the stanza that was italicized, however, after reading the poem again I understood that this stanza represented the funeral of a miner and the italicized words are the words spoken by the priest. The last three stanzas had the most impact on me because the focus of the poem shifts from the miners to their wives which makes the poem relatable to many people, especially when Larkin says, "It was said, for a second Wives saw men of the explosion," because many people have been in a situation oh where it could have been their loved one that was hurt or had died and think of the horror of it.