The unanswerable perfection of [Larkin's] best poems, the inevitable finish which leaves nothing to be said, are so apparent that one has heard such comments as, 'Yes, marvellous—but minor', as if perfection implied diminution. Such ladder-ratings get one nowhere. Who is the greater—Mozart or Beethoven?

Innocence, the pathos and grim humour of experience, the poignancy of the past (whether one's own remembered past or the imagined past of another century), the change and renewal of nature, the dread of the future, death and all that leads up to it and away from it: such listing of the subject-matter of Larkin's recent poems quickly runs itself into flat abstractions, totally lacking the precise circumstantial figurativeness and sensitive cadences of the poems themselves. Larkin has said that a good poem is both 'sensitive' and 'efficient'—two more abstractions, but ones that are given flesh when one reads such...