Philip Larkin Critical Views

Critical Reception- 'Philip Larkin: Life, Art and Love', by James Booth

·         “Affection for Philip Larkin's work is almost universal.”

·         His poems evoke the widest range of moods. His poems, each crafted to be "its own sole freshly-created universe" - Charles Tomlinson.

·         “Larkin's words possess frictionless memorability" – Martin Amis.

·         “He created a sequence of photographic self-interrogations…some are ‘poetic’, some lugubrious, some scathingly self-mocking.”

·         Larkin was aware of the capacity of his physical appearance to generate negative responses, and attempted to control his public visual image. Larkin had "no emotions, no vital essences, worth looking back on", but "siphoned all his energy, and all his love, out of the life and into the work"- Martin Amis.

·         “For though Larkin is one of our best-loved poets, he is also the man we love to hate.”

·         Some commentators did not see irony in his work, Lisa Jardine and Tom Paulin: “sexist and racist tendencies…the sewer under the national monument".

·         Larkin's friends “remembered him with affection, as witty, entertaining, considerate and kind.”

·         “It seemed that Larkin's negative public image was built neither on the evidence of those who knew him, nor on his poetry.”

·         Jean Hartley, a friend, was struck by his genuine empathy: …