Björn H's Reviews > Collected poems

Philip Larkin is not a man of huge letters, of grand gestures, of great bombastic poems. That is what I find so fundamentally appealing about his poetry. Instead he dwells on his neuroses, of shortcomings and time and again on time itself, its passing and the inevitability of old age. Larkin is a very down to earth poet in style and execution. Everyday occurrences form entire poems, such as "The Mower" when Larkin discusses him accidentally running over a hedgehog with his lawnmower and the effect it has on him:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Blake Morrison called Larkin "bard of the ordinary", a very fitting description of his poetry.