I "met" Larkin in 1972 aged 10. "At Grass" it was. I didn't realise it was a newish poem. For me, it might as well have been written 100 years before. That is, I think, what marks great poetry. Timelessness. Larkin was deliberately unmodern, and with good reason. He wasn't writing for contemporary sensibility; he was writing for the ages. He was the best English poet of the 20th century by far. Fact.
Duncan
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