Why is Larkin so different from other poets of today? The naive question is not easy to answer, although every appreciative critic and lover of poetry has his own solution, and his own diagnosis of Larkin's virtues. Long ago the Poet Laureate referred to him as 'the John Clare of the building estates', a decidedly quaint though no doubt a heartfelt compliment, in line with Eric Homberger's later summing-up of Larkin as 'the saddest heart in the post-war supermarket', or the more magisterial pronouncement that his poetry is 'representative of the modern English condition: a poetry of lowered sights and diminishing expectations'. These judgments suggest his glum accuracy about places and emotions - particularly his own - an unillusioned accuracy beautifully, and in a very English way, satisfying both the poet and ourselves with what another critic has called 'a central dread of satisfaction'. As Larkin has himself wryly remarked: 'Deprivation for me is what daffodils were for Wordsworth.' What is perfect as a poem is what is imperfect in life.

LRB 5 May 1983 | PDF Download