Perhaps because pity is the predominant sentiment of Glasgow Sonnets, as I read them, run a close second by indignation, the poor of that city appear as if at a distance, much as Larkin observed Whitsun weddings though the animating sentiments are so different, so sympathetic. Life in the run-down area of Glasgow is characterized (in sociologically relevant terms) rather than described. One is more moved, ultimately, by the poet's attitudes than by his subject. Which is to say that the sonnets fail by what is, I am sure, their own standard. The privileged outsider's eye turns realities into props.

Under the darkness of a twisted pram a cat's eyes glitter. Glittering stars press between the silent chimney-cowls …

These images are selected for aesthetic effect. As the same poem laments, there is no substitute for the deliverer who has never risen 'from these stone tombs to get the...