Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three/ (Which was rather late for me) - / Between the end of the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles' first LP.
Never pondered on the question of "sixteen" before. His biography states that he started writing poems in 1938, when he would have been sixteen. Perhaps that was when he began to explore sexual desires seriously and write about them, which "spread" to his 'shameful' poetry? Just imagining.
I'm still puzzled about "the quarrel sank". Is quarrel really a metaphor for intercourse? I thought at first I was a crossbow quarrel sinking into it's target? Which admittedly does sound like it could be a sexual image as well.
I have never encountered that term before and just looked it up. Even if it's just a small allusion, it certainly is a sexual image! My reading is more quotidian: it's just a way of saying "the argument ended," wherein the argument is the man hounding the woman for sex without commitment and the woman using sex to attain commitment (an admittedly dim view of human nature, but...Larkin). Now that pregnancy is no longer an issue, everyone can make love without a care in the world, and they do.
Never pondered on the question of "sixteen" before. His biography states that he started writing poems in 1938, when he would have been sixteen. Perhaps that was when he began to explore sexual desires seriously and write about them, which "spread" to his 'shameful' poetry? Just imagining.
That is a great idea, and it fits perfectly with the early stuff he wrote as Brunette Coleman!
I'm still puzzled about "the quarrel sank". Is quarrel really a metaphor for intercourse? I thought at first I was a crossbow quarrel sinking into it's target? Which admittedly does sound like it could be a sexual image as well.
I have never encountered that term before and just looked it up. Even if it's just a small allusion, it certainly is a sexual image! My reading is more quotidian: it's just a way of saying "the argument ended," wherein the argument is the man hounding the woman for sex without commitment and the woman using sex to attain commitment (an admittedly dim view of human nature, but...Larkin). Now that pregnancy is no longer an issue, everyone can make love without a care in the world, and they do.
"What am I supposed to do? Adopt an English accent for one word?"
Yes.
Great post.