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Article: Selected Letters of Philip Larkin.
- Article from:
- Contemporary Review
- Article date:
- March 1, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Contemporary Review Company Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A technical difficulty arises in reviewing Larkin's Letters: in all my experience I have never seen or read such foul-mouthed language, the whole virtuoso gamut of bawdry, swear-words often in every line, particularly in the earlier letters and to male cronies like Kingsley Amis. This makes it impossible to do justice to Larkin's idiom, since one cannot quote it.
The pity of it is that underneath the smelly swamp of such verbiage there is the firm ground of Larkin's thinking about poetry, again in the earlier letters where he is forming his creed and poetic persona. He told me that he was very careful of his persona. Fancy anybody bothering in such a society! ...