The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin

by Philip Larkin, Archie Burnett (Editor)

This entirely new edition brings together all of Philip Larkin's poems. In addition to those in Collected Poems (1988), and in the Early Poems and Juvenilia (2005), some unpublished pieces from Larkin's typescripts and workbooks are included, as well as verse (by turns scurrilous, satirical, affectionate, and sentimental) tucked away in his letters. The manuscript and printed sources have been scrutinized afresh; more detailed accounts than hitherto available of the sources of the text and of dates of composition are provided; and previous accounts of composition dates have been corrected. Variant wordings from Larkin's typescripts and the early printings are recorded. For the first time, the poems are given a comprehensive commentary. This draws critically upon, and substantially extends, the accumulated scholarship on Larkin, and covers closely relevant historical contexts, persons and places, allusions and echoes, and linguistic usage. Due prominence is given to the poet's comments on his poems, which often outline the circumstances that gave rise to a poem, or state what he was trying to achieve. Larkin played down his literariness, but his poetry enrichingly alludes to and echoes the writings of many others; Archie Burnett's commentary establishes him as a more complex and more literary poet than many readers have suspected.

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

1574 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

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

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading these poems is like being a stunned Canadian tourist visiting famous European sites for the first time. Everyone else has been there, everyone else knows how beyond marvelous or sublime it is, but hey, this is my first time, and I want to shout, "Look how terrific this is!!", as if it is the first time for you all too.
Good books do that to you.

[Spike Gomes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philip Larkin, the saddest heart in the post-war supermarket... from what we know him best by. But what is striking is the large amount of unpublished material from his early years which strikes another tone, as well as the light verse taken from his letters. The image of the dour faced and sparely written bureaucrat/poet for whom there was no longer a "myth-kitty" to draw from juxtaposes itself with the prolific student bubbling over with influences and symbols, as well as the sarcastic penner of bawdy limericks to his friends.

Neither of the other two modes is as genius as the one we know him for. The first was full of juvenile aspirations and ham-fisted themes and influences. The latter, had neither the nuance or dimensionality of superb light verse. Still, for better or for worse, every single lyrical verse penned by Larkin is here, with back-end commentary and variations from drafting. Likely, given his own highly reserved manner and cultivated distance from his audience, Larkin himself would not be happy with this edition. His own letters and notes written on pages clearly denote that he thought the bulk of his early work before he found his particular voice and niche in his 30s was bad, and to be honest, his estimation is correct. It's often derivative and occluded. Other times, the frustrations of the writing process break out in the poetry itself. One unfinished and unpublished work just breaks into a long CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAP and stops mid-line. The mature Larkin was definitely one who spent much time crafting and polishing what he wrote. In some respects, he had to, as the prolific nature of his writing output in his youth dwindled with age, to the point that he did not write much at all in the final decade of his life (though my personal favorite "Aubade" was written during this time).

In some ways, if you already have a collection of Larkin's verse, you really don't need to get this one. You're mostly getting things he didn't publish for a very good reason. If you're looking to see his development as a poet, his judgement of his own works, as well as his writing process and influences, then this book should be on the list. Just be prepared to wade through a lot of juvenalia and poetic blocs to get there. Certainly, the amount of work and struggle it took to get where he got is something heartening to another poet who feels like all they're producing is crap as well.

[Dan]

Larkin was undeniably brilliant at his best and even at his less than stellar he's still usually at least somewhat amusing or has a great line here or there. For the lay reader, the Complete Poems is probably a bit much, at least it was for me. A third of these poems come from the collections. Another ten percent or so were published in his lifetime, but even among those much of the work is juvenelia, published in high school or college literary magazines. Wholly too much of what's here is youthful Larkin finding his feet, then towards the end you get a bunch of scraps and extras. There are often gems hiding in a couplet pulled from a letter or even a youthful stab at something, but I would have strongly preferred a Selected edition, where the wheat was separated from the chaff for me. I did appreciate the copious and fastidious notes compiled by editor Archie Burnett, which do put the poems in context and deepen the reading experience. Another aspect of reading a metric ton of Larkin is the fact that the man himself was more than a bit of an asshole. That's easier to ignore reading the published work, but as you get into the ephemera, especially late in life, his political and racial attitudes start shining through and are unpleasant and impossible to ignore. That said, when he's good he's quite good. He was also, of course, quite funny. Why are American conservatives almost never funny? It's like you have to give up your sense of humor when you register as a Republican. Tories don't seem to have this problem, or at least they didn't used to back in Larkin's day.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘A poet once Burnetted will stay Burnetted.’

John Banville

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not that I've finished reading this entire collection yet (and when are you ever finished reading such an excellent body of work), but quite apart from the terrific poetry this also seems an exemplary piece of scholarship to me: I've rarely seen such a relatively recent body of work edited and annotated in such lavish and loving detail. Really marvelous -- and it definitely adds to my appreciation, all the relevant quotes from letters and references to possible sources both in books an real life provided in the notes.

[ZaRi]

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grabbed this book off the floor of my husband workspace, the "new releases" section near the pool table, which is ususally off limits to wives, children and pets. My first thought: "What is Stephen Tobolowsky doing on the cover of a poetry collection?" You know, the popular character actor? Played the obnoxious insurance salesmen Ned "the Head" in Groundhog Day with Bill Murray? Poetry? What?

IMAGINE my surprise to discover Philip Larkin, and read "This be the verse" and other take-no-prisoners poetry by this naughty Brit. Alarming! Crude! Awful! But wait, I'm still reading. Still reading. Heaven help me I read every single poem, some more than twice. Philip Larkin, a man of few words, and very few published poems. But I kept thinking of that Shakespeare quote, "Each Word Stabs."
I love it.

[Hannah]

I defy you to think of something more likely to be stuck in my head than a Philip Larkin poem.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like most poets Larkin's reputation rests on a handful of poems; more than most I'd say. He's the reason I'm a poet and still going strong at sixty-two whereas by his sixties Larkin's output had dwindled to nothing and he died in 1985 at sixty-three having not published a collection since 1974's High Windows. I know the poems in that book and the previous two collections well and 'Mr Bleaney' is still my benchmark poem. The poems in The North Ship feel dated and derivitive but they disappoint more because now we know his mature voice and technical proficiency doesn't quite cut it.

I was most interested in reading the unpublished stuff. I'd already read some of his juvinella and had not been impressed. His work during the last decade of his life just made me embarrassed for the man. And a bit sorry for him too. There're a couple that stand out that were published outwith the collections, 'A Writer" and "Why did I dream of you last night?" The subject matter of the poems is Larkinesque and some individual lines do shine (describing poetry as "The Ego's protest at the world's contempt" is just brilliant) but I do get the feeling he'd pretty much said everything he had to say (publicly at least) in the collections. So many of the later poems are two- or four-liners or even limmericks. The man's frustration at his inability to write is palpable.

How many stars to award this though? The quality of Larkin's writing veers from one to five stars but as a scholarly document I can find no fault here. It's clearly well-researched and detailed but my main gripe is this: Was it necessary? For me, no.

[R.J. Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've known Larkin's work since I was at school fifty years ago. For me he's one of the triumvirate, along with Eliot and Auden--the great English language poets of the twentieth century.

[Professor Typewriter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the collection to have if you are a Larkin fan, admirer, or scholar. Along with all of his published poems, readers will gain significant insight into the writing process of Philip Larkin. There are actual commentaries from Larkin about his own poem in this book.
This collection is the real deal.

[Sanjuro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Larkin is widely regarded as one of the three or four most important English poets of the second half of the twentieth century. This book deserves to be reviewed for two concerns, the poems, and the editing and commentary that accompany.

First, the poems. The book has every poem Larkin ever committed to paper, at least that we have now. Not just the poems he published, which take only half of the poetry space, but all of the unpublished poems, many incomplete or fragmented, many giving off the feeling that they were scribbled on napkins and scratch paper, maybe with no intention that anyone would ever see them. Some, towards the end, get vulgar or amount to little more than random witticisms. The published material, and maybe the first 1/3 of the unpublished material, is where the poems deserve to be judged. There is no question that, formally, they are very, very well conceived. The meter, the rhyme schemes, and the structure of the poems are crafted very well. The subject matter of the poems is just as important, and I feel that this is where Larkin's work is very much hit or miss for me. Of the 100 or so poems that he published, I loved the ones I loved, maybe 35 of them at most, but I was indifferent towards all the others, simply because they did not contain lucid and interesting themes. Also, as is well known, Larkin was VERY much influenced by Yeats, who most will admire, but I, really, do not. There are enough poems here that I will revisit, and I appreciate and enjoy some of them, but it was a chore to wade through the majority that I found uninteresting.

As far as the editing and structure, this was also hit and miss. The organization of the unpublished work was frustrating, as the untitled poems simply blended together, with no distinctive markers between them, so the reader must pay attention to the line numbers to know when one poem ends and another begins, and this is distracting. Also, there is no full table of contents of poems in the proper page order, only an alphabetical list in the back, and there is no single accounting the entire book of the exact number of poems contained therein. The extensive commentary in the back is helpful for catalogue purposes, and contains quotes and information on titles and dates, but doesn't properly "comment" on the work in any critical way, which I would expect from a "commentary."

This book is massive, and for the completist, contains everything a Larkin fan might need, aside from critical analysis. All of the work is here, as well as some helpful factual information. For my part, I am glad to have read it, for a full appreciation of Larkins work, but in the final analysis I find myself liking Larkin, but I am not not nearly as enthusiastic as his fans would be. There are certainly some 40-50 poems I will come back to and re-read with great enjoyment.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love Larkin's poetry this is an invaluable collection. It includes all of his poetry, that published and that not published but contained in workbooks. What's most valuable is the commentary on each poem. They note not only the judgments and ideas of critics but also what Larkin himself wrote to friends and other writers about what he tried to do. The editor, Archie Burnett, also points out instances when Larkin, through written comment to others or notes scrawled across the pages of a workbook, expressed his own sense of a poem's worth. The great and the minor are here without any particular arrangement. On p115 the great poem "Aubade" is preceded by an untitled limerick. The published work is followed by the more uneven and unpublished poems Larkin kept in his workbooks. The comments on these poems are shorter and less helpful because they're just coming to light. Larkin freely expresses his own disappointment with many of them. And the reader can often see why they were left in the workbooks rather than published.

[Jeff Howells · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title Complete Poems hardly does this justice...not only does it contain everything published by Larkin officially during his lifetime but also contains every poem he committed to paper, be it juvenilia, letter, post card or scribble. It also provides a commentary (the 2nd half of the book) on everything, including every different word or phrase using in the drafts. Basically it's everything AND the kitchen sink. It's arguable that some of this should have remained in the vaults but we live in a world where fans want everything published be it deleted scenes from films or every fart and cough made in a music studio. I like Larkin and this really is the final world, but I wanted to own it more than I needed to read it...

[Mizrob A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

95% of the poems in this volume is at best meh, but the 5% is really good that the whole volume gets 4 stars.

Here are two of my favorite poems:


Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
– The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused – nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel , not seeing
That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Here's a great citation of Aubade by Larkin: https://youtu.be/IDr_SRhJs80




Church Going

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation – marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

[Paulo Migliacci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it at 17, love it at close to 44: there's not much in my life that merits this dubious distinction. (Or maybe I'm just not lucky in my ratio.)

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Sean O'Brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good to read some poetry when one feels a bit overwhelmed.

[Belle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stunning, grounding, salient... Larkin brings about a certain realness in his poetry that is designed to shake you in its minimalism. Read almost like prose, with a modern feel of Paradise Lost.

[agenbiteofinwit · Rating 5 out of 5]

to love larkin is easy, so as to criticise him just for the sake of it. to none of my surprise after finding numerous collections of collected/ completed poems disappointing, larkin is such a breath of fresh air that cleanse my soul's tired ramble in pursuing the good stuff with little or no return, as he cleverly remarked in his poem midwinter waking: "those who give all for love, or art, or duty, Mustn't complaine when the return is small; Stop, now; be honest: doesn't the chief beauty Really consist in getting rid of all?" behind his careful deterministic quietism and resignation to battle against reality, it is also remarkable how he teases life itself, and mostly that of people; like in this humourously titled peom "to +++++ +++++++ and Others", he basicallt wrote: "why don't you have a go, if you're so bloody clever? just to show us, you know."

it is with a great deal of self-defeat but this innate contempt for modernism that he wrote in such way, but not so much of actual learned helplessness, as supposed to be so depressed. this recognition of the reality is crucial to him, that brings him to write in such ways. i think it mainly differs from the american bunch of poets with the same themes that the Englishness of larkin, the inherent state of being sick of life, sick of the government, the king or queen, people, even love, etc etc. it differs from the american notion which is so imbedded in their consciousness, as well as for which the Beat Generation was without, they over-emphasised on the importance of sex, which firstly objectify women and secondly, degrade their works due to the lack of transcendence. larkin was the perfect mediator of the down-to-earth style in his poems, and that while i was reading the full of his poetry collection i as listening to how they were read. the experience was so much better than going out to a pub and simply seduce yourself with beauty or a round of beers. i was astonished at the number of people on this platform who actually read larkin or those who wants to read him. it was pure pity to not have read his works, as they were quite influential in the great great britannia. nevertheless, the themes might be slightly redundant as he overly focused on the bad aspects of the society, but like the even more depressing band Radiohead's frontman Thom Yorke commenting on the "depressed" bits in his songs, he only replied that if no one was going to care about what's bad then the world would just be not good. this simple idea is what makes philip larkin so relatable and very much one of the best poets of the modern age.

to praise larkin's greatness, it is also about his form which actually varies throughout the book. they adapt themselves styles of free verse, or the traditional, classical, 18th, 19th century romantic poems, as well as which that reeks of the modernist of the same period. his lyricalism seems unfit to the context, but it is the essence of which he writes in a irrational romantic observant way that critiques the society somehow more powerful that social theories. it is ample evidences of why we need to improve as human, and the poems themselves are a place to find refuge in, to simply embody escapism in an existentialist way which sartre himself might promote. he was so obssessed with the summer imagery, which actually contrast his winter-ish poems of desperation and passiveness. it is not contradictory, but rather a mix of optimism in despair. focusing on the inevitability of death, the poems shines light on how life is simply so small in the face of eventual death, and which we spend most of our times neglecting, and it was until the approaching of it that we started to worry. this reminds me of a passage i read yesterday around death, and the sole recognition of it, is like to recognise the power relations in sociological order, that it is supposed to teach us about the structural constraints, and rebel against them if we wish to. in the face of death, larkin views it in a neutral tone, even though all of his poems reek of the same life's meaninglessness, but in that sense it is a revolt upward to finding meaning, rather than the neglect of the sum of events that are determined in life. this is the significance of such a saddening philosophy in his poems, but i deem it best to declare the truth, as it often takes courage to combat grief in the face.

with a modernist imagery on nature, people, societies, life and institutions, larkin provides a safe haven for those who find themselves the failure of the existing order of society. it is as if like the hopelessness depicted in the film Detachment (2010), which suggests a determinism of societal order that no one is powerful enough to refute. larkin is full of such sentiment, but he elevates the essence of life, and humourise the absurdities, giving us an example of laughing in the face of defeat. the ultimatum of life.

[Phil Greaney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unsurpassed, in my view - and I understand that saying so to some means nothing and for others it leaves nothing to be said, if you'll excuse my cheeky paraphrase.

The question of whether to organize by originally-published collection or by date of poem and so on seems irrelevant to me (Clive James and Martin Amis both address the issue in their works on him); I read the Faber collected years ago, and this opened some avenues - we can have both.

Both James and Amis also point to one of the primary reasons people love Larkin is his quotability, for want of a better word: it's true, I think - I can quote several of Larkin's poems entire and many more lines or two, which is quite promiscuous for me.

I wish we had this kind of attention for all poets, at least the ones I like. If you haven't read them -yet, I do envy you.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy Larkin’s poems, yes they are often pessimistic as he was himself, but they have such wonderful use of language and rhythm without any superfluity. The poems evoke a sense of realism about post war British, particularly English life.
I do not endorse Larkin’s views on politics, religion, relationships with women, and race which he most probably was indoctrinated with by his overbearing father, Sidney Larkin. However, despite Larkin’s appalling views in some of these areas, I try to see the man in all his complexity, and make allowances for how his parents (to paraphrase the poet himself), ‘fucked him up.’

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dipped into this constantly as I read Larkin's biography by Andrew Motion and, having given The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows merely four stars each, I must go ahead and bestow this collection the full five, as Larkin is easily my favourite poet, and while this collection, in its completeness, contains a lot of material worth skipping over, we've also got Aubade and The Mower and The Winter Palace and Love Again and Letter to a Friend about Girls, so yeah, nuff said.
Buy this, dip into it for a decade. You might accidentally begin to appreciate poetry.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Philip Larkin's poems are extremely relatable. His inspiration drawn from everyday life events and nature speak truth and music into the world. I can hear myself reflecting on what might seem mundane tasks now and be thinking what poetry is at work within this.
I most relate to Larkin's poem titled, The Trees, it is a great reminder to come to new seasons of life "afresh, afresh, afresh"

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I studied Larkin in school and his attitude and style has always stayed with me.
His body of work is impressive and I'm glad I took the time to revisit some old favourites as well as meander through his collected works. Impressive & meditative.

[Edgar Trevizo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea, really...

[David Bjorlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though Larkin is a bit to cynical/pessimistic to read as part of my regular poetic diet (I have enough of that on my own), Burnett's scholarly work in this book is incredible. And "Church Going" is always worth five stars.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better formatting and analysis would make this collection a must own.

[Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

👉👌🐑⬆️, 👩‍👧+ 👨‍👧 /

😕💁‍♀️...👍😒 /

🚰🐑⬆️ with ⚫️⚫️⚫️ /

+ ⚫️⚫️👉🐑

[Matthew Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sadly, Larkin is mostly known for his celebrated little poem, "This be the verse." While its use of expletive certainly gains our attention quickly, that little poem is filled with extraordinary truth and insight imto himself, and the rest of the world.

While he is a less overtly intellectual poet than T.S. Elliot, he, nonetheless, is a phenomenally intelligent poet, who wrote many other poems of great depth and understanding of death, and the human condition.

This collection is absolutely marvelous. In addition to the poems published in the only four volumes in his lifetime, it contains poems published in various other sources, and ones never published at all during his life, and are available only in this edition. "Aubade" is another great poem that both delights and gives insight into our fear of death.

In recent years, Larkin's written and recorded comments, which are quite often quite racist and sexist in nature, have come to light. While this facet of his personality cannot be ignored, and is certainly troubling for those of us who admire his work, it is, nonetheless, important to acknowledge the importance of his work, while at the same time only judging the actions of the personality which created it. I believe this does not make one an apologist, as a great many great artists were troubled individuals, to put it politely.