a book
Collected Poems
Philip Larkin · 2004 · 218 pages
One of the best-known and best-loved poets of the English-speaking world, Philip Larkin had only a small number of poems published during his lifetime. Collected Poems brings together not only all his books--The North Ship, The Less Deceived, The Whitsun Weddings, and High Windows--but also his uncollected poems from 1940 to 1984.
This new edition reflects Larkin's own ordering for his poems and is the first collection to present the body of his work with the organization he preferred. Preserving everything he published in his lifetime, the new Collected Poems is an indispensable contribution to the legacy of an icon of twentieth-century poetry.
recommended by 3 people
sourced from public statements
Carrie Brownstein
“‘On me your voice falls as they say love should, / Like an enormous yes’ (‘For Sidney Bechet’). Such spare and soaring prose to examine stunted, anxious lives.”↗
Ian McEwan
“I have a careless theory that the poetry of Larkin has had a profound effect on the prose writing of my generation. There are many writers of my age who are steeped in Larkin and, like me, incorporate the cadences of his lines, often without being aware of it. His poems are part of my mental furniture. Yesterday I slipped outside to get a sandwich at lunchtime, the sun was out, I looked at some rowan trees across the street, and I thought – ah yes! – ‘The trees are coming into leaf / Like something almost being said’. That’s Larkin’s poem ‘The Trees’. It has some almost Shakespearian lines: ‘Yet still the unresting castles thresh / In fullgrown thickness every May’.”↗
