I have never found Larkin an easy poet to like; never mind for the moment the unhappy record of his personal views and attitudes. I suspect this is partly because the first collection of his that I read properly was High Windows, which struck me (and still does) as indulging the least appealing of his poetic mannerisms – the mumble and shrug and occasional snigger that warn the reader not to take any of this stuff too seriously, the tugging undercurrent of resentment, fear, self-pity.
And yet, having got that confession out of the way – is there not something to be said for such an uncensored picture of a damaged and unhappy sensibility? You can’t make poetry just out of fear and self-pity, but what sort of poetry happens when these are so starkly acknowledged? Larkin is still widely admired, even loved, by a lot of non-habitual poetry readers. And this surely has something to do not only with the sheer lucidity of his language – the unobtrusive brilliance of how he can in so many poems sustain a scheme of rhythm and rhyme without breaking his conversational stride – but with that commitment to an undeceiving voice.
Content from our partners
