We’ve studied 4 poems written by Tony Harrison, which are about a young man whose mother suddenly dropped dead one day. His father was affected by grief. The four poems deal with the relationship between the young man and his father after the mother’s death, and they also look at the relationship between husband and wife and mother and son.
In the first poem ‘Timer’, the son talks about how the dad had wanted his wife’s wedding ring to go in the fire with her at her cremation, but it didn’t burn.
He says in the second verse in the poem ‘That eternity inscribed with both their names is his surety that they’d be together later.’ His dad thought that, though his wife was dead that their love would last forever, this was proven by the fact that her ring didn’t burn in the incinerator. He realised that the ring was to last for eternity, and the ring was an insurance that they would be together after death and forever.
In other words the love between his dad and his mum was to last forever. The son signed for the clothes of his mother. The clerk asked the son if she had still got her ring on.
The son says ‘It’s on my palm now, your burnished ring! I feel your ashes, head, arms, breasts, womb, legs, sift through its circle slowly like that thing you used to let me watch to time the eggs.’ What the boy is saying is that he is holding his mum’s ring, and he can feel parts of her body passing through like the sand passing through the thing his mum used to let him watch to time eggs.
The second poem ‘Book Ends’ deals with how the son and the father were getting on. In the poem he talks about how the father and son were eating the last apple pie the mother had made. The weird thing was they were eating it the day she died, but they were eating it very slowly. When the mother was there she use to say ‘your like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare’. This is a quote by the son saying what the mother used to say about the father and the son. She said they were like book ends, in other words what she meant by they were like book ends, was they were so different from each other, and so far apart they hardly ever talked to each other. In between the both of the book ends were books in other words there is a massive gap between the both of them in intelligence and beliefs. The son says in the poem ‘back in our silences and sullen looks, for all the scotch we drink, what’s still between’s not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.’ What the son means by this is that both of them, the father and the son were trying to drown their sorrows by drinking.
What the boy is trying to say by saying it’s not 30 years between him and his father, it’s books, books, books, is the difference between him and his father is not age, but I.Q. The boy and the father were deciding what word they wanted to go onto the gravestone. They both agreed on FLORENCE, but that wouldn’t fit on the gravestone. The boy and the father were not getting on, and they started to fight over what was to be written on the gravestone. The father says in the poem ‘You’re suppose to be bright boy at description and you can’t tell them what the fuck to put!’ What the father is trying to say is that his son is supposed to be clever, and he can’t even think of a word they could put on the gravestone. The boy says in the poem ‘ I’ve got to find the right words on my own. I’ve got the envelope that he’d been scrawling, mis-spelt, stylistically appalling, but I can’t squeeze more love into their stone’. What the boy is trying to say is he has read the letter his father was writing, and it was terribly bad. It is clear to see from this poem that the boy and his father were not getting on.
The third poem ‘ Long Distance’ deals with the relationship between the son and his father, two years after the mother’s death. There are two sections to this poem. The first section deals with the mother and father’s feelings. The second section deals with his own feelings. In the first section of the poem, the death of the mother has most affected the father. He says in the poem. ‘Them sweets you brought me, you can have em back. Ah’m diabetic now. Got all the facts’. In the quote above he is telling the son to take the sweets he gave him, because he is diabetic. The father has become very stressful which has caused him to become diabetic. Instead the father is carrying on drinking and he says in the poem ‘Ah’ve allus like things sweet! But now ah push food down me throat! Ah’d sooner do wi’out. And t’ only reason now for beers to flush mi kidney out’. What the father is trying to say is he is not interested in food all he wants is beer so it can kill him. In the last quote the father seems very sad and lonely he feels as though there is no point in living.
In the second section of the poem the son says ‘though my mother was already two years dead dad kept her slippers warming by the gas, put hot water bottles her side of the bed and still went to renew her transport pass’. What the son is trying to say is the father was missing the mother. Even after two years of her death the father was pretending that she was still alive, in other words he couldn’t accept the fact that she was dead. The father believes that there is life after death. The son says in the poem ‘I believe that life ends with death, and that is all. You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same, in my new black leather phone book there’s your name and the disconnected number I still call’. What the boy is trying to say is that he doesn’t believe in life after death. His religious beliefs are absolutely different to his father’s beliefs, because his father believes in life after death and he doesn’t. The language used in this poem by the father is very slangy and uneducated.
The fourth poem ‘Marked With D’ deals with the son’s feelings towards the father after his death. The son says in the poem ‘when the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven not unlike those he fuelled all his life, I thought of his cataracts ablaze with heaven and radiant with the sight of his dead wife, light streaming from his mouth to shape her name, not Florence and Flo but always Florie’. What the quote means by ‘I thought of his cataracts ablaze with heaven’ is the father has achieved what he wanted, which is to join the mother in heaven. Although the son doesn’t believe this, because he says in the poem ‘I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame but only literally, which makes me sorry, sorry for his sake that there is know heaven to reach’. What the son means by ‘cold tongue’ is the father could not put thoughts into words.
What the poet means by ‘only literally’ is he didn’t believe that is the reason why he feels ‘sorry’. In the last verse of the poem we find out that the father was a baker the son says ‘The baker’s man that no will see rise and England made to feel like some dull oaf is smoke, enough to sting one person’s eyes and ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf’. ‘Marked with D’ comes in a nursery rhyme, and the nursery rhyme is associated with bakers, which automatically relates to the father.
My conclusion is the father and the son don’t hate each other, but they believe in two different things. You could say that there relationship with each other wasn’t that good. Which explains why they are described as ‘book ends’. I would say that the Harrison family were quite well off, but they relied too much on the mother. The mother kept them together, and when the mother had gone the family drifted apart. My religious beliefs matched the ones of the father that there was life after death. The thing, which was causing the father grief, was the fact that he was unable to see his wife. The thing, which he was feeling guilty about, was that he couldn’t be there for his wife.
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