High Windows by Philip Larkin

by Philip Larkin

Philip Larkin ponders ordinary lives in his poems: a Saturday show; travelling salesmen; young love. At the seaside "Everything crowds under the low horizon: / Steep beach, blue water, towels, read bathing caps, / The small hushed waves' repeated fresh collapse / Up the warm yellow sand". There's an almost Shakespearian obsession with ageing and passing time in the poems collected in High Windows. "What do they think has happened, the old fools, to make them like this?…Why aren't they screaming?" Larkin asks of the elderly. His answer: "Well, we shall find out." In the titular poem he watches young lovers and wonders "if anyone looked at me, forty years back, and thought, That'll be the life". But it's hard to see into the future or the past: you have to strain, as if looking through a high window, and even then you may only get a glimpse of light through the "sun-comprehending glass."

High Windows was first published in 1974 and some critics disliked Larkin's work for its lack of experiment and familiar subject matter. Yet even at its most traditional, Larkin's writing can be striking as, in "This Be The Verse", it encapsulates prosaic truths with plain language and gentle wit:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

--Tamsin Todd

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century, Philosophy, Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL, was an English poet, novelist and jazz critic. He spent his working life as a university librarian and was offered the Poet Laureateship following the death of John Betjeman, but declined the post. Larkin is commonly regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century. He first came to prominence with the release of his third collection The Less Deceived in 1955. The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows followed in 1964 and 1974. In 2003 Larkin was chosen as "the nation's best-loved poet" in a survey by the Poetry Book Society, and in 2008 The Times named Larkin as the greatest post-war writer.

Larkin was born in city of Coventry, England, the only son and younger child of Sydney Larkin (1884–1948), city treasurer of Coventry, who came from Lichfield, and his wife, Eva Emily Day (1886–1977), of Epping. From 1930 to 1940 he was educated at King Henry VIII School in Coventry, and in October 1940, in the midst of the Second World War, went up to St John's College, Oxford, to read English language and literature. Having been rejected for military service because of his poor eyesight, Larkin was able, unlike many of his contemporaries, to follow the traditional full-length degree course, taking a first-class degree in 1943. Whilst at Oxford he met Kingsley Amis, who would become a lifelong friend and frequent correspondent. Shortly after graduating he was appointed municipal librarian at Wellington, Shropshire. In 1946, he became assistant librarian at University College, Leicester and in 1955 sub-librarian at Queen's University, Belfast. In March 1955, Larkin was appointed librarian at The University of Hull, a position he retained until his death.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Verses are impressionistic slices of the world…

Steep beach, blue water, towels, red bathing caps,
The small hushed waves’ repeated fresh collapse
Up the warm yellow sand, and further off
A white steamer stuck in the afternoon…

Dashing thoughts are like those swishing waves… Frozen images are like that motionless ship… Dynamics and statics rolled into one…

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise…

Existence without frills… Life as it is… Senility as the sum total of living…

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember
Who called this morning?

And then the bitter end… The poem after which Enrique Vila-Matas named his novel Dublinesque…

Down stucco sidestreets,
Where light is pewter
And afternoon mist
Brings lights on in shops
Above race-guides and rosaries,
A funeral passes.
The hearse is ahead,
But after there follows
A troop of streetwalkers
In wide flowered hats…

Poems are unretouched snapshots of being.

[Zanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before I developed my own politics I loved Larkin, for his way with words and ability to tug the heartstrings with maudlin reflections. He's got some great lines. But I can't read him now; he looks down on people too much, he's too conventional, too conservative, too narrowly, comfortably English. Of course, most of the time he isn't comfortable, he's reflecting on time and death, its spectre at the back of everything, but that's quite facile, he just drops it in, cleverly, at the right moment to bring a lump to your unsuspecting throat. What I mean is, he's cosy in his values, even his conflicts are resolved by the emotion they reliably provoke. Since we all feel sad about death, it's made safe. I suppose that's why he's such a popular poet. He might be provocative, but there's nothing radical about him.

[Alice-Elizabeth (Prolific Reader Alice) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Larkin is one of those poets that I can read easily and find myself content and keen to analyse more. High Windows is a collection of mainly short poems, of which some appealed to me more than others. There is one in here that really got me shaken (This Be The Verse) with the anger really coming across. If you do study poetry, make sure to throw this book into your research.

[Momina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This Be The Verse:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.


Money:

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:
‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex.
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:
They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.
By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:
Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:
You can’t put off being young until you retire,
And however you bank your screw, the money you save
Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down
From long french windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.


Annus Mirabilis:

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.


My Thoughts: Whoa, this guy's mental. And weird. And pervy. I LIKE HIM! :P

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely collection if a little disturbing. This be the Verse likely to resonate for many people. A very angry poem.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fields around are cold and muddy,
The cobbled streets close by are still,
A sizar shivers at his study,
The kitchen cat has made a kill;
The bells discuss the hour's gradations,
Dusty shelves hold prayers and proofs:
Above, Chaldean constellations
Sparkle over crowded roofs.

[Flo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forget What Did
Stopping the diary
Was a stun to memory,
Was a blank starting,

One no longer cicatrized
By such words, such actions
As bleakened waking.

I wanted them over,
Hurried to burial
And looked back on

Like the wars and winters
Missing behind the windows
Of an opaque childhood.

And the empty pages ?
Should they ever be filled
Let it be with observed

Celestial recurrences,
The day the flowers come,
And when the birds go.

*

This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

A good collection, but I enjoyed The Less Deceived more.

Jan 26, 19

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Há poetas que tratam as palavras de uma forma bonita, mas pouco entendo do que dizem; há outros, que julgo entender, mas que não me dizem nada; e há aqueles que sabem melhor do que eu o que eu quero dizer...
A primeira coisa que li de Philip Larkin foi um poema sobre a morte (ou sobre a vida, sei lá..."O bem não feito, o amor não dado, o gasto Tempo em nada"); é um poema impressionante que me libertou de qualquer ilusão de imortalidade. Infelizmente Aubade não está incluído em Janelas Altas mas estão outros igualmente magníficos, como por exemplo, Seja assim o poema:

"Fodem-te a vida, o papá e a mamã,
Mesmo que não seja essa a intenção.
Deixam-te todos os vícios que tenham
E mais dois ou três, por especial atenção.

Mas no tempo deles também foram fodidos
Por tolos trajando jaquetão e coco,
Que quando não estavam piegas ou hirtos
Saltavam, raivosos, à veia, ao pescoço.

E assim é legada a infelicidade,
Vai mais e mais fundo, como o fundo do mar.
Foge mal tenhas oportunidade
E quanto a teres filhos – isso nem pensar.”


(A imagem, que me apetece combinar com o poema, intitula-se "A Family" e foi pintada por Louis Le Brocquy.)

[Lorraine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

This must be one of the great stanzas in poetry.

[Ashley Marilynne Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm now in love with Philip Larkin's poems :D xxxx Hahahahaha!

[Catoblepa (Protomoderno) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una frattura, un'interruzione che segna un distacco tra il prima e il dopo in maniera insanabile. Il centro della poesia di Larkin è proprio in questa frattura, in questo conflitto tra l'oscuro medioevo e il fulgido progresso. E l'esperienza di vivere in una frattura non è mai scontata, ma può essere appagante, deve esserlo, e può essere addirittura piacevole leggendo queste poesie.
Se questa raccolta è l'intercapedine tra due generazioni, il suo punto di forza è l'aperta zona di conflitto tra giovani e anziani; un classico, ma che qui spicca perché non è più la sola innata natura ribelle dei più giovani a portare al distaccamento, è il mondo stesso ad aver creato la frattura; cambiato profondamente con la perdita di dio, tra le due generazione non ci sarà più possibilità di incontro. La conciliazione è impossibile:

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives-
Bond and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly.

La liberazione sessuale come fulcro della frattura, come muro innalzato tra presente e passato. Ma il vero punto nodale è che Larkin fa anagraficamente parte degli anziani ma è ideologicamente coi giovani (addirittura più senza dio dei giovani liberati sessualmente). Per questa sua doppiezza è destinato a non darsi pace, non riesce a (non può) trovarsi a suo agio con nessuna fazione. Sì, perché il distacco è talmente potente che di fazioni si può parlare.

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or slopped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange:
Why aren't they screaming?

Non c'è soluzione, non c'è pace: i vecchi di cui fa parte sono dei fools, non hanno mai capito nulla, come i più volte citati (da me) storici sartriani, ostinati nell'attaccamento alle loro capricciose tradizioni. Perché è evidente che il capriccio è del bigotto, non del libertino, alla faccia della retorica di qualsiasi potere.
E nella sua indagine del nuovo mondo Larkin arriva infine a identificare temporalmente quella frattura, il momento dell'abbandono delle vecchie follie. Il 1963, l'anno del primo LP dei Beatles e della fine del bando de L'amante di Lady Chatterley è il momento dell'erezione, in cui il cazzo delle frustrazioni secolari può finalmente rizzarsi, e ancor di più è il momento in cui la fica diviene libera di cercare la propria stessa libertà. Annus Mirabilis si intitola il componimento, ed è tutto un dire.

Fino a carpire la vera essenza dell'essere giovani: ovvero decidere (perché di decisione, di propria volontà si tratta) di sbarazzarsi di ogni ingombrante retaggio:

This is being young,
Assumption of the startled century

Like new store clothes,
The huge decisions printed out by feet
Inventing where they tread,
The random windows conjuring a street.

Ma scambiare un saggio filosofo, uno dei massimi poeti inglesi del '900, per un vecchio arrapato in cerca di facili coiti o per un altrettanto facile apologeta della giovinezza è il più grave degli errori. Larkin ha dalla sua la consapevolezza del mondo, e accompagnato da un nichilismo tanto selvaggio quanto incredibilmente compassato, sa che il paradiso sessuale è effimero, sa che il mondo è migliorato ma che, ahinoi, l'angoscia è insita nella condizione umana. In una potente e indignata negazione delle fruste metafore sulla luna l'autore la rende il memento infinito e persistente del dolore dei giovani:

Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O woles of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

Al tema centrale della frattura si alternano anche altri contesti, meno derisori nei confronti degli old fools, ma agghiaccianti per desolazione. L'immagine, tetra, dell'albergo solitario nelle ore bianche contese tra la notte e il mattino è ad esempio ricorrente, e nelle mani di Larkin diviene una sublime opera di terrore. Terrore della solitudine. Brividi per il terrore della solitudine.

Light spreads darkly from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And silence laid like carpet. A poster reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesman have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is–
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.

Il canto disperato nell'ultima strofa, con la prosopopea dei corridoi senza scarpe e la sensazione di esilio nei confronti di una casa che forse neppure esiste, ecco, questo è quello che io intendo per meraviglia.
E ancora.

Higher than the handsomest hotel
The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,
All round it close-ribbed streets rise and fall
Like a great sigh out of the last century.
The porters are scruffy; what keep drawing up
At the entrance are not taxis; and in the hall
As well as creepers hangs a frightening smell.

Non solo. Larkin sfonda le più tetre soglie anche usando l'autoironia; agghiacciante quella di "Posterity", in cui si immagina le conversazioni private del suo eventuale biografo, di indomabile disprezzo nei confronti del poeta ma colme del piacere dell'attesa della sua morte, che porterà tanti bei quattrini dalle coccodrillesche vendite post-mortem del libro sulla vita dello scrittore defunto.

Fino all'amarissimo distacco di ogni pretesa sociale e al rifiuto dell'arma vile dell'economia e del denaro, oggetti incomprensibili, eppure traino delle esistenze:

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:
They certainly don't keep it upstairs.
By now they've a second house and car and wife:
Clearly money has something to do with life

E infine l'apice assoluto, a mio modo di vedere, raggiunto dalla descrizione della morte nella seconda strofa di una poesia già citata in precedenza:

At death, you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines–
How can they ignore it?

In una meravigliosa accumulazione di poesia e fisica (qualcosa che verrà tentato, pochi anni dopo, anche da Longley, con risultati buoni ma non così straordinari) ancora è il volto anziano, sfigurato dagli anni, a divenire presagio del trapasso. Non c'è pietà per chiunque sia incanutito, sia invecchiato, abbia semplicemente vissuto secondo le vecchie regole. Con dolore (lui c'era in mezzo). Con violenza. Probabilmente con torto.
Ma anche con alcuni dei versi più belli che io abbia mai avuto la fortuna di leggere.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best poetry books I have ever read. These poems can be sombre and serious, or thoughtful and amusing, or even scathing and bitter, and despite this wide variety of tones they all hold together into a sum even greater than the parts (the parts are already tremendous) thanks to the extraordinary music that Larkin composes with his words and rhythms. As for the subject matter: someone once said that his work is "provactive but not radical" and I thought that was a very acute insight. His melodic gripes aren't political but centred on the human condition. He is a philosophical poet more than anything else, a brilliant one.

[Babs · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is thanks to my Uncle Jürgen that I read this collection, as he had said he could never 'get warm' with Larkin, and I'm not surprised. I'd heard he had a propensity to steal all the covers, and on top of this has of course been dead for the last 26 years. So quite a chilly fellow indeed. Ok woefully poor jokes aside, Larkin writes of bleak things unflinchingly. In 'The Old Fools' he looks at the dribbling retarded imbeciles our parents become and wonders whether people like this are aware of their state, and if so, why they aren't screaming? He concludes, calmly, that we needn't know the answer straight away as there will be time for us to find out for ourselves. In one of Larkin's most quoted poems, starting 'They fuck you up your mum and dad', he simply advises that we don't propagate, and therefore halt the misery of human existence.

I noticed from reading this collection that Larkin often deals with 'large' subjects, such as the tides of the sea, ageing and dying, procreation, and harvest festivals, which have been going on since time immemorial, but then very much anchors them in his precise moment in time, pricking the poems through with references to transistor radios, horse-boxes and chocolate papers. Larkin also links the bottomless past with the present contemporary time in poems such as 'Going, going', where he basically laments what is now known as urban sprawl, and also in 'High Windows'. This latter I particularly liked as it made me think about contraception and how it has changed human relationships. Being born well after the advent of the Pill, and having probably been kept at bay for quite a few years by it, I have never personally known or had reason to feel a world that Larkin describes. He mourns the fact that, with birth control, now 'Bonds and gestures [are] pushed to one side'.

It is worth mentioning other poems in the collection which are brief and (ostensibly) simple but incredibly, delicate beautiful; such as those looking at cut grass or the sun. These seem freer and lighter than Larkin's other poems that deal with humans, society and change.

So, well I couldn't 'get warm' with Larkin either, but I don't feel he would have loooked to create this kind of intimacy with his writing in any case. I think the most one could do after having read these poems, is to then consider them, alone, while looking down out of your window, as Larkin did, at the world outside. Larkin can be cold, and cynical, but he does share with us the beauty and hope that he finds in Nature.

[Yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Larkin's poems always make me think "Hey this is exactly what I felt". and then, silence.

Have you ever feel sad about the concrete jungle around us? This is the book for you.

Larkin has a sensitive observation. What appears in his eyes are always dipped in his thought.

Great booklet to start read Philip Larkin!

[Rianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/30 books read in 2015.

Never have I been more glad that I went back to a booksale to pick up a book I had seen the day before! This is absolutely one of my favourites now. Eventhough it was published in 1974, High Windows feels like it could have been published during my life time. This little book has made me excited to try other poetry collections.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always enjoyed Philip Larkin's poetry so I decided to do my dissertation on him, and now, approaching the end of it, I love him even more. I can't really explain why I like him so much, but I do and he is, for me, the greatest poet of the modern world.

[Hind · Rating 4 out of 5]

The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your Gold.

Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.

Still learning to open up to Larkin's poetry.

[Jonathon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bleak but it always rings true. A firm favourite poet. Always.

[Deborah Schuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim book is filled with profound thoughts of aging and life in general but written in the profane words of ordinary humans. Philip Larkin is an amazing poet.

[Steven Godin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed. These poems just never really sunk in.

[Nhu Khue · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Only the young can be alone freely.
The time is shorter now for company,
And sitting by a lamp more often brings
Not peace, but other things.
Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams:
Why, of course–"
- Vers de Société
----
P/s: We all should read This Be The Verse.
 

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

On a personal level, posterity has not been kind to Philip Larkin. On a poetic level, he remains one of the great ones of the 20th century.

My paperback copy mirrors the hardcover image: plain blue and white with black and white lettering. A thin volume of poems, perhaps several dozen; I read them in an afternoon.

There is something more enjoyable about reading the book as the author intended, rather than any "Selected Poems." I never cared much for that format. I want to see everything, even if it is already a thin volume.

There is not a bad poem in here. I liked them all. He is not prone to happiness, but his sardonic sense of humor, beautiful use of language, and crusty insights into the day to day, make up for the lack of cheeriness. He shares this quality with one of his own favorites: Thomas Hardy.

I've not read all of Larkin's books. His output was not large. But I've read enough of his other poems, here and there in anthologies, to know that High Windows is a good entrance into his work.

[Descending Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poetry collection is probably Larkin's best, In my opinion anyway. It's considered to be darker or bleaker because of the things that were happening and changing attitudes. Highlights ~ "To the Sea" "The Trees" "Forget What Did" "High Windows" "The Old Fools" "The Building" "Dublinesque" "This Be The Verse" "Solar" "Annus Mirabilis" and "The Explosion".

[Steve Alker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved these poems. High Windows itself is suddenly heart lifting. The family favourite, by dint of the language though has to be This be the Verse, "They fuck you up, your mum and dad----"! Brilliant.

[Derian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tuve necesidad, por alguna razón, de releer este libro. Philip Larkin es un viejo amargado y para colmo pelado. Ahora que yo también estoy más viejo (por suerte tengo pelo) como que le encontré otro sabor, el de la cosa sana, el de yo también estoy hinchado las pelotas de todo.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly bittersweet...how can anyone weave such great humour with the everyday sadness of the voice from lives lived at arm's length?

[Jasmine]

it’s a no from me.
the narrative perspective is interesting but mostly too disdainful and morose to the point of ridiculousness; homage to a govt = gross, yes it’s satire but ‘all we can hope to leave them now is money’ loool so are we mourning our loss of colonial legacy ? No thank u. Annus Mirabilis I didn’t mind, reminded me of that McEwan novel On Chesil Beach. I would probs recommend the latter instead. Also the nostalgia of To the Sea in the context of the current economic stagnation of UK seaside resorts (@ Blackpool) is p prescient and thankfully we don’t have his weird elitist, nationalist commentary re how England has Fallen in that one.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of piss in this one. The most bitter and vulgar collection of Larkin's, which is fairly impressive. I've started getting into the history of jazz recently and found it funny to learn that for Larkin, a massive jazz fan, 'modernists' like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were ruining his beloved art just like everything else in Britain slowly turned to shit.
No longer a teenager I don't put the same intrinsic value on wallowing in one's misery as I once did, but for Larkin, it certainly produced results. What have I to show for myself? Might I get 10 likes on a review, someday?

[Fredore Praltsa]

Lost youth, apathy, regret, lamentation over ugly new building developments ... something in here for the nihilists, the NIMBYs (boo), the sexually frustrated, and, if none of those groups is yours, just read the title poem (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...) and see if maybe you are wrong about that.

[Best · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the sad, nostalgic undertone that runs through this little book, the last collection of Larkin's before his death. Sharp eyes, as ever. While This Be the Verse gets the most buzz for obvious reasons, I'm most mesmerized by Sad Steps and Old Fools.