“Limericks of Loss And Regret” has 50 short stories, but the longest is the title story, which concerns a professor and her dawning understanding of the transformative power of limericks.
There’s nods to James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” W.B. Yeats’ “TYhe Lake Isle of Innisfree” and, of course, ABBA. In her morning class, Professor Loudglade reviews an assignment about Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” written in 1971 and launched with a pretty explosive first line, especially considering 1971 was also the year “Bedknobs And Broomsticks” came out. (But also “A Clockwork Orange,” “Harold And Maude,” and “Dirty Harry.”)
THIS BE THE VERSE—by Philip Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
The title is a reference to Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem,” which makes death look so peaceful that I might just do it myself some day.
REQUIEM—by Robert Louis Stevenson
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
I’m sure you could quote me a hundred poems in blank verse and I’d say, “Oh! That one!” but I remember the ones that rhyme. And I’m reassured by poems that, in their rhythm and/or lyrics, suggest what suggested them. I like these two epitaphs and their not-incompatible themes of inevitability and homecoming.
Larkin’s poem is cheekier, of course, and reminds me of the origin of the word nostalgia, hewn from the Greek roots “nostos” (homecoming) and “algos” (pain). A Swiss medical student (Wikipedia tells me) coined the term in the 1800s to describe the difficult adjustment of Swiss mercenaries returning from war. And I’m like, “Have you seen the getup the Swiss Guard wear at the Vatican? That’s your algos right there.”
Of course, “nostalgia” means something different lately, but its origin as a way to describe what would later be called PTSD is intriguing. What dopes it say about Robert Louis Stevenson and the time he lived that he looked forward to his death with a kind of nostalgia (the way we understand it now)? Or that Larkin seemed to parody “Requiem” using the original meaning of the word, as in “Your chickens have come home to roost”?
Little of this is in the story, of course. Do you think I’d give you the milk for free? I’m a late-stage capitalist, Buddy.
The words above may or may not have appeared in that transformational unit of literature known as “Limericks of Loss And Regret.”
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ISBNs
LLR paperback: 978-1735343402
LLR eBook: 978-1-7353434-2-6