From The Financial Times, by Martin Amis re: Philip Larkin. "Larkin
died 25 years ago, and his reputation (after the wild fluctuation in the
mid-1990s, to which we will return) looks increasingly secure. And we also feel,
do we not, that originality is at least a symptom of creative worth.
Larkin certainly felt so. In a letter of 1974 he quotes a remark by Clive James
– “originality is not an ingredient of poetry, it is poetry” – and adds, “I’ve
been feeling that for years.” Larkin’s originality is palpable. Many poets make
us smile; how many poets make us laugh – or, in that curious phrase, “laugh out
loud” (as if there’s any other way of doing it)? Who else uses an essentially
conversational idiom to achieve such a variety of emotional effects? Who else
takes us, and takes us so often, from sunlit levity to mellifluous gloom? And
let it be emphasised that Larkin is never “depressing”. Achieved art is quite
incapable of lowering the spirits. If this were not so, each performance of
King Lear would end in a Jonestown."
