- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Against Aesthetics
- The Unbearable Rightness of Criticism
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- The Sovereign Ghost of Wallace Stevens
- Eliot in Ink
- Larkin’s Toads
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Frost’s Notebooks
- Heaney’s Chain
- Heaney’s Ghosts
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- World War II Poetry, Reloaded
- Frank O’Hara’s Shopping Bag
- The Village of Louise Glück
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Nobody’s Perfect
- Elizabeth Bishop at the New Yorker
- Elizabeth Bishop at Summer Camp
- A Critic’s Notebook
- A List of Don’ts
- Permissions
- Books Under Review
- Index of Authors Reviewed
Larkin’s Toads
Larkin’s Toads
- Chapter:
- (p.73) Larkin’s Toads
- Source:
- Guilty Knowledge, Guilty Pleasure
- Author(s):
William Logan
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
This chapter reviews The Complete Poems, as thorough an edition of Philip Larkin's poetry as any reader will require. Those sated with the poems still have the poet's extranea—the two novels, the jazz reviews, the stray prose, and the letters. There is even some smutty schoolgirl fiction, a lumpish biography, and a shelf of academic criticism. Despite Larkin's lack of range—he rarely varied his tone; his métier was the portrait, the meditative lyric, the grumble—few poets could have written touching poems as Larkin did about renting (“Mr. Bleaney”), or retired racehorses (“At Grass”), or a vandalized holiday poster (“Sunny Prestatyn”), or salesmen (“Arrivals, Departures”).
Keywords: poets, poetry, Philip Larkin, love, misanthrope, The Complete Poems, reviews
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- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Against Aesthetics
- The Unbearable Rightness of Criticism
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- The Sovereign Ghost of Wallace Stevens
- Eliot in Ink
- Larkin’s Toads
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Frost’s Notebooks
- Heaney’s Chain
- Heaney’s Ghosts
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- World War II Poetry, Reloaded
- Frank O’Hara’s Shopping Bag
- The Village of Louise Glück
- Verse Chronicle
- Verse Chronicle
- Nobody’s Perfect
- Elizabeth Bishop at the New Yorker
- Elizabeth Bishop at Summer Camp
- A Critic’s Notebook
- A List of Don’ts
- Permissions
- Books Under Review
- Index of Authors Reviewed