By Mary Karr
Sunday, August 17, 2008; BW12

Philip Larkin almost tried to sound unattractive and misanthropic. How'd he describe himself at Oxford? As a balding salmon. Ultra-conservative in politics and art, he praised Margaret Thatcher and mocked experimenters like Picasso. For Larkin (a college librarian), poetry was "an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are." He didn't read in public and eschewed any fanfare associated with what he scornfully called "being a poet." College pal Kingsley Amis once asked if he dreamed of being poet laureate of England, and Larkin quipped, "I dream about that sometimes -- and wake up screaming." He never wasted a reader's time but spitefully resented his own being wasted through inane social activity. He opens "Vers de Société" by satirizing an invitation:

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps

To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps

You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend.

Day comes to an end.

The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.

And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid --

The poem concludes with Larkin's trademark fear of death, which leads him to accept the invite he initially scorned:

Only the young can be alone freely.

The time is shorter now for company,

And sitting by a lamp more often brings

Not peace, but other things.

Beyond the light stand failure and remorse

Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why of course --

My favorite poems by Larkin aren't his jokey snide ones, but the more introspective lyrics that find a tragic failure to love in his urge to isolate. In "No Road," the lost lover is also a next-door neighbor.

Since we agreed to let the road between us

Fall to disuse,

And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,

And turned all time's eroding agents loose,

Silence, and space, and strangers -- our neglect

Has not had much effect.

Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown;

No other change.

So clear it stands, so little overgrown,

Walking that way tonight would not seem strange,

And still would be allowed. A little longer,

And time will be the stronger,

Drafting a world where no such road will run

From you to me;

To watch that world come up like a cold sun,

Rewarding others, is my liberty.

Not to prevent it is my will's fulfillment.

Willing it, my ailment.

These last lines sound squeezed through clenched teeth -- the phrases growing shorter and shorter, as if losing steam. So as the poet's self-knowledge becomes more like an indictment of inadequacy, the poem tightens till it snaps shut, leaving us out, as Larkin willed it.

(These poems are from "Collected Poems of Philip Larkin," edited by Anthony Thwaite . Copyright 1988 by the Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted with permission of Farrar Straus Giroux. )

Mary Karr is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.