Introduction A few months ago, maybe in November, certainly by December, I began this ‘barefoot sprinting up grassy hills’ thing I’m going about to talk about in detail below. Shortly after I started, I began making use of the kettlebells I’d usually ignored at the gym(s) I have access to. I’ve been dual-tracking in time the two topics in this piece, kettlebell swings and sprints, but because of how text works, I must discuss one of them first, and one of them second. I’ve been hustling the kettlebell swings hard lately. If you’re one of the folks I’ve hung out with in-person, you know what I’m talking about. You are reading the blog post I said I’d send you. Someone said, believably, credibly: tell me more about these kettlebell swings, because I will do literally anything to be a stronger climber. Gladly. As usual, I’ve got a page a few pages of paper notes that I’ve put together across time, and am now bringing it to here and organizing it. I first crossed paths with kettlebells, and the ‘heavy two-handed kettlebell swing’ many, many years ago. I wrote my first piece about kettlebell swings in 2013. Did not write about them again until now. In 2013, I was using 55 lb kettlebells, and didn’t have access to other sizes. Now that I have access to real kettlebells, and at a variety of weights, I am find a lot more interestingness for myself. I still stand by that piece, and regularly since then have made kettlebell swings a part of how I use my body. Maybe two months ago I brought kettlebell swings back into my life, first time in many years, and I’m thrilled. My back feels AMAZING, and a bunch of other things. In case this information makes it incrementally more likely that any reader harvests any of the same nice things, here’s all of my beta. I try to write things when it’s first coalecing in my mind, and this current piece is no exception. Kettlebell Swings TODO: Add video of 2-handed swings. Here’s an album showing one-handed and two-handed kettlebell swings. The two-handed swings are me & a 75 lb kettlebell, doing reps 81-100 for that day’s work. The one-handed swing is from a different day showing reps 1-5 on each arm with a 55 lb kettlebell. I believe I did ten total on each side that day. The blog post about kettlebell swings I wrote now 12 years ago is maybe worth referencing. I no longer have the home-made kettlebell. The piece is a good-enough starting point. I remember getting a TON out of kettlebell swings long ago, especially part of training for a high-elevation marathon, and I’m thrilled that I used them then. It helped my back stay healthy, for sure. Then, after I stopped running, I stopped the kb swings, and then WRECKED!!!! my back doing something completely unrelated, and have not run since then… Until now (More on sprinting below) I also didn’t really do kb swings the last few years. Then, for reasons that do not have anything to do with climbing, I found a way to bring back into my life running, and stumbled backwards back into kettlebell swings, and have noticed so many interesting things as a result. In a way that is no longer surprising to me, my climbing has also been nicely effected as well, even though that was never the original intent of the kettlebell swings. Originally, I didn’t expect the exercise to do anything for my climbing, and in fact felt bummed when the kettlebell swings would sometimes leave me tired enough that I felt I was having a lower-effort, ‘maintenence’ climbing session, rather than a fresh, ‘try-hard’ session. Then, because of a slight reframe, I’m now thrilled by the soreness I feel from the kettlebells, and don’t mind that i’ve been carrying fatigue into most of my climbing sessions since I’ve started ‘spamming kettlebell swings’. Here’s misc notes I collected across a few days/weeks: I really don’t like to work hard, or even breath that hard. When doing my swings, I always breath through my nose, per Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. I started with sets of 5-10 reps. Then rest until my breath returns all the way to normal, and my heart rate, then i do more. Keep going at a low rate of effort until ~100 reps, if feeling good. If I’m a little sick or whatever, I found myself dropping the weight a lot and still finding 60 reps difficult enough to stop there. (that was part of how I knew I was sick at the time. Came down with a slow-onset illness, and I noticed it first by a stunning loss of power. 60 reps of a 60 lb kb is vastly less work than 110 reps of a 75 lb kettlebell, but when I was sick the 60 reps at low weight were harder than the 110 reps of 75lb swings) It’s impossible to do kb swings well without chalk, I used to not use chalk, or I’d do swings even if I didn’t have chalk, and that is no longer the case. i found the weights I was using to be so heavy that simply holding on to the dang thing was often-enough a hard part of the exercise. I now recall, the last time I did kettlebell swings without chalk, legitimately, correctly fearing the bell breaking free of my hands during some part of the motion. I don’t climb without chalk, I do not swing kettlebells without chalk. As soon as any part of the form would ‘break’, if it ever did, I’d end the set. It almost never broke. both of the videos here have pretty good form. My form isn’t always the exact same, across sets, especially the one-arm swings. In both videos, my heels sometimes come off the ground. It’s reflective of me having to try very hard. Often-enough my heels do not rise off the ground, which feels more correct. Heels up or not, I’m pleased with it, because it shows that my form is and looks quite good, even though I know the exercises were quite effortful. Back and shoulders in particular look “packed”. It looks much more straight forward than it felt in my body. an unexpected crossover: Kettlebell Swings and Climbing I noticed lots of kb-swing-related soreness while climbing. Some climbing moves became for a time very sensory-rich because of how it was interacting with soreness recepters. The soreness in my hands after the KB swings is similar to the soreness in my hands I experienced after trying something from Tyler Nelson’s insta: Drop the load a little and increase the muscle activity. Your fingers will thank you for it (instagram) sometimes, usually, I’d begin the climbing session with kettlebell swings. Sometimes I’d do the swings at the end. Sometimes I’d do only kb swings, and would not climb, if I didn’t feel like climbing. the gym I use is close enough that I can walk to it, and will walk/scoot right by it often enough even if I don’t seek it out, so it’s trivial for me to pop in for a few minutes of using a single piece of equipment, and then continue on with my day. #scooterthings Often enough, when doing the kb swings before the climbing session, I’d notice how nice it felt to be really warmed up, and warmed up with speed, not just slow ‘warm up’ climbing. The kb is very demanding, and takes speed, the same way that jumping into the air takes certain speed. It’s really nice to soak the nervous system in this level of effort, and helps for the climbing. I’d do the kb swings, and feel really well warmed up for bouldering. I also sometimes would feel really sore from the kb swings in ways that would be EXTREMELY OBVIOUS when I was climbing. I was thrilled bc that meant I was getting a ton of useful crossover. right now, as you read these words, consider ‘shrugging’ your shoulders, up towards your ears, and then pushing them back ‘down’, with firmness, and rigidity - these were very often the muscles that I’d feel EXTREME fatigue in, across days and weeks, and plenty of other muscles, but that these muscles in my body were so sore was continuously surprising to me. I pretty quickly dialed down good-enough technique, and then started adding weight. I got to 75 lb two-arm swings, spent a few sessions there, that was the heaviest kettlebell at that gym, then I found an 88 lb kettlebell at a different gym and have now used that one a few times. The first time I did it, I’d still not tried any one-handed kettlebell swings. I’ve now done a bunch, and the second time I used that 88 lb kettlebell, it felt shockingly easy to hold on to and swing, compared to how it felt the first time. It’s still wildly hard. That 2nd set was yesterday, as I type these words, I can feel soreness in my thumb, if I stretch it, each of my fingers, and much more. update from a few weeks later than that paragraph was typed^^: that 88lb kettlebell, while not feeling light, now feels much, much, much easier to move around. I giggled to myself the last time I used it, because of how easy it was to hold on to, and to swing!!! this kettlebell swing thing is a high-value 5-10 minutes in every session. i almost always do 100 swings. even when moving slow, it’s only like 7 minutes. If you read half this blog post, you’ve spent far longer reading than I spend on most kettlebell swinging sessions, which, for the record, even the ‘active 7 minute workout’ is still mostly me standing next to a kettlebell, not swinging it. I weigh 140lbs and started with a 55lb kb, then 65, then 75, then 88. Spent a few sessions at each weight before going up one. I switched to one-arm work with a 45 lb suitcase/farmers carry a few times, then 55lb one-arm swings, then 60 lbs, and get use from 45lb one-arm swings too. I do between 60 and 130 reps of two-arm swings, and started with like ten reps of one-arm swings, then 20, 30, and have not done more than 40 in a session so far. an unexpected variation: One-handed kettlebell swings I’ve got a video of me doing one-handed kb swings here. I started one-handed swings the very first time on accident, because when I went to the gym, the 70 and 75 lb kettlebells were in use. So I grabbed a 55, and thought “i bet I can still get a version of the exercise I want”. Oh, wow, I was correct. It feels so stability-encouraging of my toros, back, spine, ‘the box’ of the upper body, because of it’s asymetric nature. I could feel my spine and the mucles along it, and the entire “box” of my upper body (sides, front, back, bottom of my core), straining to maintain their body position. Straining to resist movement, rather than straining to move. Wildly applicable to climbing movements. My forearms and hands were quite nicely stressed by the effort - I could feel the familiar sense of fatigue in the muscles/connective tissue inside of my hands, the fleshy part of my thumb, I could feel fatigue and stress in the middle bone of my fingers, too. not the bone in the tip, not the bone connecting to the palms. The one in between. How nice. I could feel sensation from the muscles along my spine all that night and the next day - nothing felt painful or damaged, simple soreness and the feeling of use. I could tell the entire system had been thoroughly stressed. It felt so good. I could feel my rib intercostals and so many stabilizing muscles that night, feeling so sore and happy as I crawled into bed and went to sleep. I’ve had that feeling in my body now every time I’ve done KB swings, and usually carry perceivable fatigue into the next day, but it’s partially because I’m often-enough increasing the ‘work’ that I do every session. Once I started one-arm swings, I’d do five reps at a time, per side. I started at 55lbs, then went to 60 a few times, tried 45 lb swings once, liked it, and will probably keep upping the reps and weight as it feels good. I’ll slowly ease the rep count up, and sets. I started with 5 reps per side, then did 8, then reduced the weight and went to ten reps per side, and maybe 40 swings total, across a few sessions. other variations to the two-handed kb swing Hold a kb that’s like 1/3rd your body weight while standing around, or stretching, or shifting weight and doing bodyweight squats and stretches and stuff. Bounce on the toes. Switch it back and forth between your hands often. I started with like a small number of minutes of holding it, while moving around. The one-arm weight/motion is very interesting, both while moving around or perhaps while remaining very still. after a 45 lb/33% bodyweight suitcase carry, a 55lb one-arm kb swing isn’t such a leap, even though at first I surprised myself with how much I could move with the single-armed swing. try to move slowly under/around the kb. Think doing light yoga while holding a kettlebell. mega challenging, interesting. One-leg balancing, golfball pickup type motions, if you want. Felt to me promotive of stability in ways that justified the effort. So much for kettlebells. These have been something I’ve been doing regularly now for a few months. The same length of time that I’ve been doing this sprinting thing… Barefoot Grassy Hill Sprints In The Park I started these sprints I am about to describe before I restarted the KB swings The sprints had been going great for maybe two weeks, and then one of the times I walked past the kettlebells at the gym, I was like ‘my back and legs are already feeling great/tired, maybe i’ll be able to do kettlebell swings without my back feeling terrible the next day.’ I was right. Anyway, here’s free-associating through sprints, as recorded in a paper notebook across a few days: The idea originally had nothing to do with “running”. it started with ‘grounding’. A few friends have spoken in some length about grounding, over the years, the idea always seemed plausible, and I never did any particular action in response to it. years later, another friend that I’d meet at Cheesman Park, throwing frisbee, talked about it as he was taking his shoes off on a warm day in the fall, a few months ago. I thought ‘what a reasonable idea’, as I took my own shoes/socks off and went barefoot for the rest of the frisbee throwing session. Eventually, I started going barefoot often-enough when the weather was nice and we were throwing a frisbee, but usually never took more than a few lazy steps at a time to catch a disk, while barefoot. relevant: years ago (2020) I took a gnarly back injury and basically have not run since then, and for a long time could barely walk. Then even short walks would wreck me. Shortly before the injury, I’d run the Leadville Trail Marathon, and was climbing, so I was pretty abled, and the difference was profound. Deserves it’s own blog post or two, some time. As I think on it, it really changed me, the time of that injury, the things I experienced immediately afterwards. also relevant, years before that injury, after reading the Born to Run book that made the rounds, maybe in 2009 or 2012 or whenever. That was the one and only other time in my 35 years I’d done a specific ‘barefoot run’, for like 12 minutes, on a patch of grass at a park. My calves were DESTROYED, even though it was a short run, and I was used to long runs in normal shoes. I never ran barefoot again, but the memory stuck with me. So, back to 2024… I don’t have running shoes, and didn’t want to have to obtain another pair. I also know that walking up a hill is lower-impact on the body than a level surface or down a hill. I also know that walking on grass is lower-impact than walking on asphalt, concrete, or dirt. It’s gentle on the skin. So, I figured if I ran, and even sprinted, with a strong body position, up a hill, on grass, while barefoot and on the balls of my feet, and went only short distances, while doing lots of walking or standing around, I might not injure my back, and might find it interesting enough. I was right. It was all sorts of interesting, enjoyable, peaceful. I’m calling this ‘sprinting’, but it also involved plenty of ‘meandering back from whence I sprinted at a very, very leisurely pace’. I started with a short distance and a gentle but fast run. More than ten paces, probably less than 20, usually only the distance I could run while holding a single breath, or maybe two, because breathholding and nasal breathing. It’s a hold-over, always-running script in my brain. Ensuring I’m breathing through my nose, and sometimes holding my breath, or breathing in a very controlled way. Sprint sprint sprint, then walk, lazily, back to where I began, then walk around a little more, then sprint sprint sprint, repeat. It is vanishingly rare that I begin a sprint while still breathing hard, at all, from the prior sprint, and I usually let plenty of time elapse after my breath has all the way slowed down again. That was the routine, and it’s been extremely rewarding. TODO: create photo album, link to convey the gist of the vibe of the sprint/walk things 👉 Here’s a photo album of the vibe of the barefoot park sprints These “sprints” vs. distance running I’m appreciating how uneasy I am naming things sometimes, and ‘sprints’ is making me uneasy. It’s emphasizing the wrong thing. Alas. So much about the experience compares/contrasts with running. I like easy things, and tend to do more of something if it’s easy than if it’s difficult. Here’s ways this sprinting thing is easy: It’s barefoot, and I’m always close to where I start, so I can show up wearing ‘regular’ shoes, normal clothing, with a backpack, coffee, and more. Drop the bag, take off the outer layer of cloathing (i’ll have shorts or leggings under my pants, pretty much all the time, in the winter), take off shoes and socks, fold it all neatly in the grass/under a tree and I’m ready to run. I started this in the winter in colorado. there’s plenty of sunny days, and as long as there’s not snow on the ground, I’ll run. I’ve run barefoot in as cold as like 21 degrees farenheight. Only because the sun was out, and there was no snow. Again, much of the niceness to me of the sprints isn’t even the sprinting, it’s the walking around on the ground barefoot. Sometimes it’s cold, or the ground is wet in different ways. wet ground still counts as ‘nice’. It’s like a tiny little ice bath, when it’s snow melt or recently frozen. Like I said, I prefer comfort, and I usually run in dry, warm grass, but there’s a blob of trees where I run, and I sometimes interact with the shadow, which keeps ice/swow longer than the spot in the sun. Or I run/walk/stand mostly in the shadows of the trees, in the warmth. The hill I run up is south-facing, and because it’s sloped, water flows off it, so it dries out really quickly after snow, and becomes very usable very quickly, even when lots of the rest of the ground is covered with snow. Having my backpack with water in it, coffee, my coat, extra layers, makes it convenient even in the winter. Since I ride my scooter even in the cold, I’m accustomed to having a pair of leggings (that I can run in) under whatever pants I’m wearing that day anyway. I warm up by sometimes moving at a walking speed, but doing ‘high knees’ or doing a slow, ‘in place’ jump on each leg. It can look sorta like skipping. It can ‘build’ towards you doing something that looks like running through thigh-deep water. My goal was always to simply stress enough that I’d feel it the next day, on the bottoms of my feet. It wasn’t an aerobic workout, it wasn’t a leg workout. I’ll never forget how much a 2-mile barefoot run did me in, when I let myself run barefoot with my normal distance running form, in high school. The first session I did a low number of trips up the hill and back, I stopped while I felt fine and fresh, and I reflected ‘this small amount of movement is still more than I’ve had for a while’. It felt great, and as importantly, felt great the next day. Since I was at the park again anyway, throwing frisbee with a friend, I did some more ‘sprints’ up the hill. I’m a curiosity-driven person, I don’t know if that comes across as why these sprint things are so interesting to me. Eventually, I started jogging slowly back to the start, sometimes, and immediately would sprint again. Or I’d walk back, walk some more, walk even more, stand stationary for a bit, and then sprint again. After my sprints, to continue with the theme of applying impulse to the balls of my feet, I would/will hop on the balls of my feet, bouncing with two feet a few times and then landing firmly on one foot, to try to catch as much force as I could on each side. I could feel the gentle soreness the next day, always. I’d always evaluate how I felt the next day, and never pushed anything ‘hard’ or ‘got worked’ or anything, still have not, in any particular session. It feels so good in the balls of my feet, the arches, calves, supporting structures. I have found tons of interestingness in the simple observation and sensation of the soreness. I don’t count things, either. I don’t count reps, steps, distance, time. I start when my breath is still and slow, and I usually stop before it’s much more than ‘slightly elevated’. I got the entire sprint workout from a recent warm day, here. The first video, it was a bit too sunny, so I moved into the shade of some trees, and finished the sprints, in the second timelapse video. The whole thing took less than ten minutes. It feels so nice getting sunshine on my skin (colorado, afterall) and grass, dirt, moisture on my feet. My body feels so good, months later, still doing these sprint things. SO GOOD! I’ve been doing kettlebell swings throughout, too. Sometimes on days I’d run I’d skip the swings. When there’s snow out and I don’t sprint, I’m vastly likely to do some kettlebell swings. Often I’ll do both, because both the park and the gym is ‘right on the way’ for me, to many places. The park is close enough I can walk there, or I’ll take my scooter and convert a 12 minute walk to a 4 minute scoot. My brain and mood enjoy the experience. I’ll often take a frisbee and text my normal frisbee throwing friend(s), and he’ll sometimes join me for some frisbee tossing. I might frisbee before, during, or after the sprints. I’ve done these sprints with Eden. We were walking through cheesman already, she was asleep in the jogger, so I parked her jogger where I usually sprint, in the shade of a tree, and did the running right next to it. Then tom met me for some frisbee, we tossed for a while, then Eden woke up and was ready to depart, so we did. the whole thing is quite peaceful, full of ease, effortlessness. It’s nice to not spend a single dollar on traditional running gear. I don’t like the impact of doing anything on asphalt, and I won’t run on a road that is cambered, because it feels devestating to one’s body, to run across a slope like that. I don’t have to deal with cars, in this sprinting thing, either, and I don’t hear any engines nearby, unlike running on a road. When traveling, out of town, without access to Cheesman Park, and still wanting to do these sprints, I modified it to run in the playing field of a school near where I’ve visited. It was all fine, by the way. I prefer to run up a hill, yet this format seems to work on a level surface, well enough. The whole workout can be done in 5 minutes, or, if I’m feeling a longer session, it will stretch across many more minutes. Grand conclusions I’m so aware of how some of my skeleton and muscles function together often-enough to maintain the shape of a box, other times these systems function to form something of a column. The column of my spine is very perceivable along side the ‘box’ of my torso. I’m aware of holding tension/stiffness/maintaining a position through my whole body, in various situations. my climbing feels better. way better. My shoulders feel strong, my fingers feel strong, my core feels strong. It’s been interesting to experience the transfer of power from holding the round kb handle, for instance, and the ‘c’ shape one’s hand makes when crimping on steep holds. This is the ‘active hand position’ tyler nelson talks about. Being able to hold that ‘c’ is easier to me now, dramatically so, having ‘trained’ it, unintentionally, with kettlebells. I feel light on my feet when walking around. I still do not like to train, io don’t think it’ll change. I am thrilled that with almost zero time I get so much. The sprinting is also ‘walk barefoot in the grass in a park in the sun’ which obviously we should all be so lucky as to get a little bit of that every day. It’s nice for my 🧠. usually I have earplugs in and can only hear my own breath, when I do the sprints. And kettlebells. I wear ear plugs most of the time I’m not at home, and even some of the time I am. 😬 Ear plug wearing while exercising seems to make it effortless for me to perceive my own breath. I feel light on the wall. the one-arm swings + sprints helped me feel the intense usage of arms/shoulder girdle/the sides/front/back/bottom of the ‘box’ of my core. (Do not neglect the bottom of the box of the core! Kegles & pelvic floor strength is for everyone with a pelvis!) Updates on sprints after two more weeks I’m still quite pleased. I did some unexpectedly long walks on concrete, amidst some of the prior exercise, and I felt much stronger, most of the time, than usual. I think it would have been too many miles if I hadn’t been getting stronger. I did like three seven-mile days in a row, all back to back. I got a slight over-use tendon sensitivity on one of my feet. There was, and to a much lesser degree still is, pain around the movement of lifting my right toe, entirely coherent with a regular walking motion. I modified my gait a little, when it was really bad, and didn’t use it until it felt mostly better, and I’ve been easing back into using it. It was hurting quite appreciably for a few days, and now five days later it’s still delicate and I retain some of my accommodations. Sooo I wish I hadn’t done that to myself. There was a day after the big huge days of walking where I thought “hmm, this feels like it is damaged” and I went on a bit more of a barefoot walk in Cheesman than I wish I had. That night is when I realized it was pretty sensitive. The toe looks/feels like a bruise along the top of it, close to what it would feel like if the nail had been beaten into the nail bed (like after a long run, something I experienced often enough marathon training). Truly, this is the only pain of substance I’ve experienced. All the rest of the pain has been pain of interest, where I note slight sensitivities and sorenesses as I move around, in certain ways, body positions, motions, and it’s all, still, interesting. I appreciate how I’ve felt pleasent stress inside of my knee, the tops of the shin bones. I like how my knees and ankles feel. The sprints still feel worthwhile, and the time walking/bounding barefoot continues to be time very well spent. Updates on kettlebells after two more weeks some gyms have kettlebells that have rough, textured handles. The high-to-me weights are therefore rough on the skin of my hands. some kettlebell handles are too rough for me to feel comfortable with the swings. I could feel myself trying to accommodate it somehow and it was hurting, so I did a lot less reps. The skin at the base the fourth finger always gets pulled by the kettlebell, picks up callouses that have never torn but have sometimes felt close. Ideal kettelbell handles look like brushed metal, polished smooth. Don’t forget the chalk. I’m still getting lots of climbing-specific benefits from the one-armed swings. I’ve now done both lower-weight higher rep one-arm swings, and higher-weight lower-rep schemes. It’s all been interesting to me, which is good enough. It continues to feel deeply supportive of strong climbing. I’m sorta annoyingly still telling lots of people about this strange magic that helps my back feel great, and everything else too. If you’ve done more than skim a few paragraphs of this article, you’ve probably spent more time reading than your first two kettlebell workouts would take. I was having issues where the heaviest swings were pulling at the callouses at the base of each hand’s 4th finger. Eventually I noticed that if I sqeeze the handle a bit more at the bottom of the swing, it seems to pull less hard on the skin. So, if the skin in the hands starts hurting, squeeze harder? My fingers and hands feel nice. I’m not surprised, as often-enough I’ve felt profoundly sore in the small muscles inside my hands themselves, and all over the upper body. Much of the fatigue and soreness moves in waves through the shoulders and ‘shrugging’ motions. I am really curious for someone else to replicate this, doing lots of heavy two handed kettle bell swings, and eventually trying one-handed (heavy) kettlebell swings. I did one arm swings recently with 65 lbs, which is like 48% of my bodyweight. Heaviest I’ve done yet, and felt ‘lighter’ than the first time I tried 55 lb one-armed swings. My form and posture keeps getting better, and have I mentioned I feel stronger? More notes from a few weeks later I’ve regularly been dealing with the skin on my hands suffering under the weight of the kettlebell. HUGE NEWS! When I squeeze the kettlebell handles more tightly, much of the discomfort related to the skin pulling goes away. It took years of swinging a kettlebell for me to make this connection, I’ve never heard it articulated before. 🧐 I was obviously squeezing enough to hold onto it, but the skin was ‘sloshing’ around under the kettlebell. this is now minimized when I squeeze the bell harder. Huzzah. Related Reading Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art Drop the load a little and increase the muscle activity. Your fingers will thank you for it (tyler nelson instagram) Driven by Compression Progress a photo album of the vibe of the barefoot park sprints a photo album containing two videos - two-handed swings, reps 80-100, with a 75 lb kettlebell, and one-handed at 55 lbs Footnotes

“Let everything happen to you,” wrote Rilke, “Beauty and terror.” It is not easy, this simple surrender. The courage and vulnerability it takes make it nothing less than an act of heroism. Most of our cowardices and cruelties, most of the suffering we endure and inflict, stem from what we are unwilling to feel, and there is nothing we cower from and rage against more than our own incoherence — that intolerable tension between the poles of our capacities, which Maya Angelou so poignantly addressed in one of the greatest poems ever written, urging us to “learn that we are… read article

Quite a marvelous season after a protracted Northern winter, spring is the hoariest of subjects for a poem. How many ways are there to be jubilant or render the sensation of “cavorting with the milkmaids,” as an old friend once put it? The effort usually comes off as hackneyed or embarrassingly neo-pagan, like the carrying-on of a dim, histrionic teenager. As close as Philip Larkin ever approaches this state is in his spring poem “Coming” (The Less Deceived, 1955):   “On longer evenings, Light, chill and yellow, Bathes the serene Foreheads of houses. A thrush sings, Laurel-surrounded In the deep bare garden, Its fresh-peeled voice Astonishing the brickwork. It will be spring soon, It will be spring soon -- And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who comes on a scene Of adult reconciling, And can understand nothing But the unusual laughter, And starts to be happy.”   James Booth in his biography of Larkin calls it “one of his most serenely beautiful poems.” It’s a poem for adults who understand that the world is a complicated place, where happiness is fragile and precious. Typically for Larkin, the phrasing and word choice is unexpected and precise (a rare combination): “Its fresh-peeled voice / Astonishing the brickwork.” So too, “forgotten boredom,” seemingly an oxymoron. Thanks to Larkin we can learn to value flickering spots of happiness. Someone said there are no happy lifetimes, only happy moments.   I opened The Complete Poems (ed. Archie Burnett, 2012) again after reading Peter Hitchens’ review of it in the June 11, 2012, issue of National Review. The title is a good one, “Stark Beauties.”  I think it’s always a good idea for a reviewer, at least in passing, to address the new or first-time reader, and not make too many assumptions about what he knows. This is especially true in the case of Larkin, who since his death in 1985 has been libeled by self-righteous moralists. His Complete Poems is among the rare essential books published in recent decades, one to shelve alongside Hardy, Robinson, Yeats and Auden. Hitchens writes:   “What might the new reader, unprejudiced by reputation, see in this odd, ugly man’s poetry? There is first of all a great deal of gentle kindness, not very well hidden behind a grumpy and unsympathetic public persona.”   Hitchens devote additional attention to Larkin’s other spring poem, “The Trees” (High Windows, 1974): “I have never been able to read the lines ‘The trees are coming into leaf / Like something almost being said’ without hot tears forming behind my eyes. I have no real idea why this happens (it just happened again) but I know that it does and that these two immensely simple lines contain a mystery of language which I shall never solve in this life.”   Larkin is a poet of deep feeling but never in a manner that is self-serving, like that teenager mentioned earlier. He reminds me of something Yvor Winters wrote about Gerard Manley Hopkins in The Function of Criticism (1967): “[T]he poem is a rational statement about a human experience, made in such a way that the emotion which ought to be motivated by that rational understanding of the experience is communicated simultaneously with the rational understanding: the poem is thus a complete judgment of the experience, a judgment both rational and emotional.”

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