The Explosion

Larkin, whose poems often upcycled non-traditional poetic forms, rejuvenates a little-used poetic form here: the tercet, stanzas of three lines. Traditionally, the tercet has been used as part of a longer poem with more traditional stanza lengths to create emphasis or as a pause to give a moment’s reflection. An entire poem constructed through tercets, however, is more remarkable. Although there are familiar examples—Percy Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” Alfred Tennyson’s “The Eagle,” Robert Frost’s “Acquainted with the Night,” Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”—perhaps the most recognized use of the tercet is Dante’s epical Divine Comedy, which is indeed, like Larkin’s poem, set in unrhymed tercets.

Given its tight construction—its haiku-like minimalism, its emphasis on conciseness, and its sheer efficiency—the tercet is often used to enhance the feeling of a phenomenon that passes quickly. That phenomenon here is nothing less than life itself. Given the poem’s theme, how accidental death disrupts everything and puts an unexpected end to a life thought to have much time left, the tercet, with its concentrated emphasis on brevity, underscores that feeling of absolute and sudden ending.