Larkin and His Audience

Abstract

Readers of Philip Larkin's poetry keep writing about it, even though they recognize how simple and clear it is, because they also sense that its most distinctive aspect is indefinable, not just in criticism of the poetry but in the poetry itself. Because this aspect of Larkin's poetry seems by its very nature to be inexpressible, it needs speaking of in as many ways as possible, if the very sense of it is not to lapse. It seems that only the obvious can be said of Larkin, and that everyone who has written on him has said it again and again, in one way or another, since it is as simple and clear as a glass of water. Yet, because it cannot be defined, doubts remain as to whether either his most sympathetic critics, like John Wain, David Timms, and Alan Brownjohn, or his more severe, like Colin Falck, Donald Davie, and Calvin Bedient are responding to what makes Larkin's poetry of distinctive value. Of Larkin himself, however, there can be no doubt. His choice of Ab sences as his own favorite poem for the anthology, Poet's Choice, as early as 1962, indicates that even then he had a sure sense of the indefinable aspect of his poetry that gives it its value. For Absences comes closer than any other of Larkin's poems to being explicit about what is inexplicable.