Larkin and Duffy Critics

'There is a lucidity of language which invites understanding even when the ideas expressed are paradoxical or complex'

Peter R. King on the clarity of Larkin's writing.

'Larkin seldom presents himself as anything but the onlooker'

James Naremore - Larkin's perspective in his poems.

'His writing is driven by a sense of failure in both'

Andrew Swarbrick - In reference to Larkin's life and work.

'At the centre of Larkin's poetry is the pursuit of self-definition, a self which feels threatened by the proximity of others but which fears that without relationship with otherness the self has no validity'

Andrew Swarbrick - Larkin feels as if one is defined by their connections and relationships.

'Larkin's poetry is the pursuit of difference'

Andrew Swarbrick - Larkin aims to differentiate himself from other poets.

'Don't judge me by them. Some are better than me, but I add up to more than they do'

Philip Larkin - Does not wish to be defined by his poetry.

'Larkin presents himself as a skeptical, less deceived observer of contemporary life'

James Naremore - Larkin often comments on contemporary life.

'Let me remember that the only married state I know (i.e that of my parents) is bloody hell. Never must it be forgotten'

Philip Larkin in his diary - Bitter views on marriage.

'Absolutely contrary to nature, both because men cannot help desiring many women and because women in any case become undesirable at twenty-six'

Philip Larkin in his diary - Men desire young women.

Larkin's collection presents 'a poetry from which even people who distrust poetry, most people, can take comfort and delight'

X. J. Kennedy (Poet and anthologist)

Larkin produced 'the most technically brilliant and resonantly beautiful, profoundly disturbing yet appealing and approachable, body of verse of any English poet in the last 25 years'

Alan Brownjohn (Poet and novelist)

Larkin 'avoided the literary, the metropolitan, the group label, and embraced the nonliterary, the provincial and the purely personal'

Alun R. Jones (Contributor to the 'Pheonix)

Poetry reflects the dreariness of postwar provincial England and voices 'most articulately and poignantly the spiritual desolation of a world in which men have shed the last rags of religious faith that once meant meaning and hope to human lives'

The general Press.

Larkin wrote 'in clipped, lucid stanzas, about the failures and remorse of age, about stunted lives and spoiled desires'

J. D. McClatchy (Poet and critic)

Larkin was 'the saddest heart of the post-war supermarket'

Unanimously agreed by critics.

'Duffy's concern with the duplicitous nature of language is matched by a concern for the way language can alienate, creating a sense of otherness and distance'

Bernard O'Keeffe - Duffy's use of language to create distance.

'Many of Duffy's poems echo themes of Larkin's'

Justin Quinn - Similarities between Larkin and Duffy.

'She has an optimistic side that Larkin did not, most visible in her many love poems'

Jody Allen-Randolph - Differences between Larkin and Duffy.

'I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn, and thin on top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the ace of death'

Carol Ann Duffy - Differences between Larkin and Duffy.

'Duffy shares Larkin's tragic views of life...loneliness haunts her verse'

Jody Allen-Randolph - Similarities between Larkin and Duffy's view of life.

'With a lot of artists, the mystique is to baffle their readership. She never does that. Her aim is to communicate'

Calvin Tomkins - Duffy's aim is to communicate.

'She was the first poet to push language and form, their limits and tensions, to articulate that bankrupt and dislocated era'

Lavinia Greenlaw - Duffy's interest in language and form.

'I does for me; I don't believe in god'

Duffy saying poetry replaces religion in her secular life.

'I write quite a lot of sonnets and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite'

Duffy on sonnets in relation to prayers.

'Poetry and prayer are very similar'

Duffy on the similarities of poetry and prayer.

'Poetry, above all, is a series of intense moments - its power is not in narrative. I'm not dealing with facts, I'm dealing with emotion'

Duffy of poetry as a form of expressing emotion.

'There was a mixture of direct address and something slightly surreal, fanciful, tender-hearted and whimsical'

Andrew Motion - The nature of many of Duffy's poems.

'She is extraordinarily well balanced, in her work and in her life'

Andrew Motion - Duffy's strong sense of direction and vocation.

Duffy moves beyond 'a straightforward feminist poet' and shows 'the difficulties that patriarchy present to both men and women'

Deryn Reese-Jones - Duffy is not a straightforward feminist poet.