Philip Larkin: Life and Background

Abstract

A critical study of Philip Larkin’s poetry — even such a slim and modest one as this — treads on thin ice. Larkin’s poems hardly need explication for they offer themselves with such an easy grace and clarity that the critic is rightly made redundant by them. Larkin’s aim was to address himself to readers, not to the lit. crit. industry, and he expresses himself with a directness and eloquence which should have no need of the intermediary services of the critic. What necessity, then, for a survey such as this? First, because we are usually so lazy in our reading that we need to be reminded that poems demand a different sort of attention. Reading poems is an activity different from reading, say, a newspaper report or popular fiction. We have to be much more alert to words and the way they are used and this simple fact has been so obscured that we need to remind ourselves of it by books such as this. Second, Larkin’s poems are so eminently readable that it is particularly easy to overlook their craft and artistry: Larkin has the gift of making the highly complex activity of poetry look so easy that his real mastery is in danger of being passed over. But you must remember that what is presented here is only an introduction to the poems, brief sketches which you need to amplify by your own close reading. This survey can only help you to your own fuller understanding of Larkin’s poetry by encouraging you to explore it further on your own.