It was one of my earliest encounters with Larkin, Martin. I was still in school I think. Yeah, I like it a lot too. It's in your face rude and all that, and appropriately so, imo, but what really attracted me was its absolute starkness. I wouldn't argue it's his best, but it was my introduction to him and enough for me to want to read more.

James, I just ordered a used paperback copy of Larkin's The Complete Poems. I've read a pretty good number of his more well-known poems, but I'm looking forward to this book.

I should do the same and read him again. High Windows was the last I read of him, some time ago. But he's stuck to me anyway. A beautiful stain of influence.

I first read him when I was 18. This was pretty much my first encounter with him ... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe.../faith-healing

I went through the Collected Poems again recently. Striking to see him quoted - at length - in the final episode of Devs.

Setting back poetry 80 years?... lol. I think not.

Thank you, David. The last stanza is immense.

That's what I thought on first reading, James! I still think that. I'm glad you do too.

Two other longtime favourites, which I think resonate in the same way, you'll know already, I'm sure: At Grass and MCMXIV.

These are prime Larkin. What will survive of him is these - among others.

Hello conny, I think so. We had Eliot's modernism and the reavaluation of language, the opening it up to experiment and complexity, and then we had Larkin, anti-modernist, with very little experimentation in either language or politics, kicking Dylan and Graham off the shelves (okay I'm speaking of the Movement which he was a part of) and replacing it with the type of no-nonsense, stiff-upper lip verse that the modernists had done everything to overcome. For them language was a means and an ends; for Larkin it was just a means. And a pretty boring one at that.

I don't think you've read Larkin, Cameron. Not really.

Nah. Some people despise him, for various obvious reasons, but boring
is not a word that applies. I get that some people might try and put the
boot in every now and again, but he’s Teflon. Things just slide off without
sticking. That’s how I know how good he is/was. Betjeman said he was the
John Clare of the council estates, which I think is about right.