Philip Larkin Critical Essay | Critical Review by J. D. McClatchy

Critical Review by J. D. McClatchy

SOURCE: "Songs of a Curmudgeon," in The New York Times Book Review, May 21, 1989, pp. 24-5.

The following review commends poet Anthony Thwaite for including much of Larkin's unpublished work in Collected Poems, thereby revealing the careful editing and revising Larkin performed, and the deliberation with which he practiced his craft.

Once, some years ago, when he was asked what he thought about the prospect of becoming Britain's poet laureate, Philip Larkin replied, "I dream about that sometimes—and wake up screaming. With any luck they'll pass me over." They didn't. The story goes that in 1984, by which time he had long been the most admitted poet of his generation in England, Larkin was offered the laureate's post—and refused it. Perhaps by then he knew his health was precarious. (He died of throat cancer on Dec. 2, 1985, at the age of 63.) But the refusal was also characteristic.