SOURCE: "Larkin and His Audience," in The Iowa Review, Vol. VIII, No. 4, Fall, 1977: 117-33.

Here, Brown focuses on Larkin's "absences, " not solely as symbols from nature, but as referents for his audience.

Readers of Philip Larkin's poetry keep writing about it, even though they recognize how simple and clear it is, because they also sense that its most distinctive aspect is indefinable, not just in criticism of the poetry but in the poetry itself. Because this aspect of Larkin's poetry seems by its very nature to be inexpressible, it needs speaking of in as many ways as possible, if the very sense of it is not to lapse. It seems that only the obvious can be said of Larkin, and that everyone who has written on him has said it again and again, in one way or another, since it is as simple and clear as a glass...