This Be the Verse, Deal With It

The Larkin reexamination continues, but unlike other critics upset by the revision of the poet's canon, Stephen Metcalf has nice things to say about the new Collected Poems in this week's NYTBR, even considering the omission of work "Larkin did not see fit to publish, including some major poems, most notably 'Letter to a Friend About Girls' and 'Love Again.'"

... passing over the immature work, the reader hits upon a virtually unbroken string of quietly harrowing masterpieces. For the first time in one volume, we get Larkin as Larkin intended.

The extra-long piece does get down fairly deep in its consideration of Larkin's use of language, but there's only so much you can say about poetry itself before the average reader's eyes glaze over, apparently, which means yet another round of "What's yr take on Philip Larkin?" (With apologies to Le Tigre.) The effort to contextualize his racism doesn't entirely convince, but then few such efforts are ever fully successful. And as an added bonus, Metcalf offers the best feint in a long while by a Times contributor around the paper's reluctance to use certain words, even when they're integral to the discussion: "Put another way: he thought his mum and dad had indeed . . . well, you know the rest."