In lines perfectly constructed and as beautiful as they are plain-spoken, Philip Larkin found a way of delineating our most difficult emotions – giving them back to us in images and formulations that help us both comprehend and contain ourselves. His is a fine-tuning that turns ‘true and kind’ more truthfully into ‘not untrue and not unkind.’ These are poems to live with and through, from the trenchant assertion of ‘They fuck you up. . .’, to the transcendent image-making of ‘High Windows’: 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.
