SOURCE: A review of Collected Poems, in The American Spectator, Vol. XXII, No. 10, October, 1989, pp. 46-8.

In the following review of Collected Poems, Brookhiser examines the language and content of Larkin's poems, concluding that "his world looks severly limited."

The Collected Poems of Philip Larkin, editor, jazz critic, and librarian at the University of Hull, have appeared four years after his death in a volume edited by Anthony Thwaite. The first thing that strikes the reader is the photograph of Larkin on the jacket, which is notable for its aggressive ugliness. Aggressive implies will, and I use the word advisedly. We are not responsible for our baldness or our wrinkles, which God gives us, but we can choose our glass frames. Larkin's—black, square, heavy—look like a prop from a Monty Python sketch on chartered accountancy, or a spare pair of General Jaruzelski's. He wanted, in other...