Collected Poems

In five years, nine Larkinites have posted reviews to these pages. One laments the death of poetry's ability to move the masses, laments the lost world in which poetry was a master art, in which Longfellow might hold a theater in thrall with tales of Gitchee Gumee.

Why doesn't everyone who reads in the English Language know Philip Larkin?

Oh, this Larkin is most assuredly not for every taste--he is ugly, rueful, bitter, timorous, and in these he is wholly and perfectly one with his poetic voice. He is a formalist--a large quantity of rhymed iambic pentameter at a time when most "poetry" is indistinguishable from prose except in the way the lines are arranged--who sounds, miraculously, astonishingly, colloquial (the particular mark of his genius). Many of these poems attain a perfection--Aubade, High Windows, This Be The Verse, others, all relatively well known--that literally staggers the imagination. As with the (classic) jazz to which Larkin was so devoted, in which the players continually found "new" notes to blow, and even created new musical vocabularies when the old ones were exhausted, Larkin finds boundless new resources inside the English language and then bursts poetry's integument asunder when his straightlaced, albeit eccentric, formalism seems to hem him in.

Unlike most contemporary poets, Larkin creates lines you remember--indeed, cannot shake--and want to memorize for the delight, and mortification, of self and friends.

Larkin does not, by the bye, deal in any manner of obscurantism. What he means is clearly on the page. It may not leave you in the sunniest of dispositions, but it will lift you, powerfully, to another level of poetic appreciation.

This is a book for life by the major voice of my time.

Philip Larkin once remarked that he felt the poet should take the reader by the hand and lead them right into the poem. Maybe that is just another way of saying that his poems are accessible and will touch you even when reading them for the first time.
Yes, Larkin does embody the somewhat grumpy spirit of post-war Britain, but like all good poetry they are about the something that seems to be missing in our lives. There are some feelings no writer has ever put more precisely. Formally rather conservative (rhyme, no daring metaphors), the vocabulary is utterly down to earth. "Talking in bed should be easiest," Larkin begins, only to find out that with the lengthening of the silence "It becomes stil more difficult to find / Words at once true and kind, / Or not untrue and not unkind."
The feelings expressed may not always be nice, nor is this much of a self-help book, so it is utterly opposed to the spirit of our times, but this "old-type natural fouled up-guy" will make you love poetry if you are not yet sure about whether your do ("to prove our almost-instinct almost true: / What will survive of us is love.") Get this European poet looking at himself as if he were a complete stranger as a contrast to you confessional poets!

'Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.'

If you were to look for a central theme in Larkin's poetry, these lines might be it. Larkin constantly grapples with the tragedy of everyday existence and the final inevitability of death, not with rebellion, but with a quiet and honest acceptance. I think this is what sets his poetry apart, that he never shies from unpleasant reality or rebels against it with false bluster or bravado. Larkin constantly comes across in his poems as an old or aging man, but one who with his experience can see the world stripped of all false hopes and illusion. This clarity of observation and expression gives his poetry its power.

Philip Larkin no longer needs any introduction: he is widely recognised as one of the greatest English poets of the twentieth century.
His poetry may however not be to everyone's taste: there is no place for lace and flowers in Larkin. His work is more often than not dark and reflects the feelings of a man who probably felt everything was wasting away about him: not only his own life, but the world as a whole. Through his poems we discover a man who seems to have skipped childhood and adolescence and who finds himself at fifty having had life pass him by. Larkin's poetry expresses his sourness, his fears, his repressed anger, his spite, his general disgust with society and the modern world. And it does this in the most expressive of ways, never shying away from the words that seem necessary, however crude they might be. There is much beauty in his despair.
If you are sensitive to poetry, then you cannot avoid reading Larkin. Be warned however that you should not read Larkin to brighten up your life: the "happy poems" are few and far between. But read him nonetheless and decide afterwards whether his work is to your liking. He may just hit the spot on one of those lonely evenings when you feel yourself that everything just isn't as it should be. And after that, you will never be able to separate yourself from a copy of Philip Larkin's Collected Poems...

Larkin is a great poet whose Collected Poems are the most exciting body of work to come out of post-war England. Despite his famously small output, the number of poems of great renown is very large, "The Whitsun Weddings", "An Arundel Tomb", "Mr Bleaney", "Sunny Prestatyn", "Letter to a friend about girls", "High Windows", "Love Again" among several others. Other poets have bigger names, Auden in the world, Betjeman in England, Heaney even, but their poems are not nearly so intimately known. The usual reason for this is the education syllabus, which ensures the position of, say, Frost or Shakespeare (both of whom are, of course, great) but Larkin is only grudgingly anthologised in school volumes in England even and rarely taught. Why the intimacy then? Because Larkin spoke the truth, or you could say he spoke true. His diction was everyday idiom: we are advised to "Get stewed", he himself is "fouled-up", his friend has a job "To pay for the kiddies' clobber". But never at the expense of the poetry. Baudelaire viewing "Les Desmoiselles D'Avignon" in progress in Picassos' studio regretted the inability of the writer to invent his own words compared with Picasso's intrepid laying out of a new painterly vocabulory. Larkin's enormous poetic ability and equally large artistic integrity allowed him to use the everyday speech of his generation absolutely as it should be used. His narratives fitted this situation allowing him to invent that language and for it to be immediately understood by everyone. His concerns are the concerns of every sensible man, girls, booze, jaz, money, the destruction caused by the population boom, the theatre of other people's lives and of history viewed from a safe distance - that is the spectacle of life without the cost of privacy. These are all intimate concerns to everybody. But he says it beautifully and well and concisely and memorably and everything he says rings with truth and reason. He has that portion of sensibility that everyone can respect. We can all be thankful for Larkin's memorable diagnosis of the 20th century human condition.

Philip Larkin, 1922-1985, worked as a librarian. He was the best loved poet of his generation. The earliest poems to strike his characteristic note were written in 1946. Larkin's reputation as a poet began late in 1955 with the publication of THE LESS DECEIVED.
Larkin said he was a meagre poet. He had responsibility for a university library after 1955. Perhaps this task drained away his energy. His fame frightened him.
Larkin's poetry was strongly Audenesque for about three years. Following Larkin's period at Oxford, influence modulated to Yeats and Vernon Watkins according to Anthony Thwaite. The editor sought to show the growth of a major poet in the collection.
The arrangement of the poems is chronological. There is a special section for the early poems, 1938-1945. The early work is very accomplished, particularly that from 1940 and throughout the decade. One shining line, just to give an example, is "A prayer killed into stone."
Some of the poems have not been published previously. Some are unfinished. All are mature products of the poet. Larkin worked over his drafts. The selection of the poems is careful and sure. The poem "The Dance" is similar to a short story.
The poet is funny, ironic, and sad. His reportedly obnoxious qualities show through in the work, in the sense that his curiousity shows, his mindfulness. The poet is self-aware.
Larkin presents to us his good ear, he presents to us his philosophy. He says, for instance, that to be ambitious is to fall in love with a particular life you haven't got. "High above the gutter a silver knife sinks into golden butter." He fears that England will be bricked over, that it will not last.
He is a master of rhyme, half rhyme, interior rhyme, and most importantly of selecting the appropriate word. Larkin's poetry deserves the permanent place on the poetry shelf it has attained.
The introduction by the editor and the publishing information in the back of the book is useful to the reader. The care taken in compiling the collection is admirable. The American reader will enjoy sinking into the post-World War II English world portrayed so colorfully by Philip Larkin.

Larkin's poetry is laser precise: he writes fine, delibrate phrases with strict rhythm, never indulging in broad ambiguity. He writes what he means, usually meditations on his being a misfit. He's grumpy, regretful, selfish, stubborn and prone to pursuits of the flesh. He's also completely owns up to all his faults and writes these trim, funny little confessionals, to the benefit of anyone who speaks English and reads poetry.

Larkin's poetry is laser precise: he writes fine, delibrate phrases with strict rhythm, never indulging in broad ambiguity. He writes what he means, usually meditations on his being a misfit. He's grumpy, regretful, selfish, stubborn and prone to pursuits of the flesh. He's also completely owns up to all his faults and writes these trim, funny little confessionals, to the benefit of anyone who speaks English and reads poetry.

I give the book four stars because of Larkin's verse. However it is not clear to me that the editor has paid attention to the order of the composition of the poems. This is a matter often neglected. It is important when reading a poem from a book of poems--say High Windows--to know what poems surrounded it. The editor does provide the original order in the back--but the order of composition matters or rather the arrangement of poems that the poet produces matters--if Larkin wanted a certain order it was because he felt that the poems feed off each other in a specific way. Reproducing the poems willy nilly destroys the pattern of the poetry.

Philip Larkin's poems are never bright and cheerful--but that's okay. Whether sad, poignant, or wickidly funny, his poems speak directly to you--you feel like he is someone with whom you have a lot in common. He is also, of course, a true poetic genius, a virtuoso with sound--for proof of that, look no further than the trochaic rhythms of "The Explosion", one of his few non-personal poems. There are gems all through this book. Read them a few at a time, to savor them.