SOURCE: "Frivolous and Vulnerable," in New Statesman, Vol. LXIV, No. 1646, September 28, 1962, pp. 416, 418.

A major poet of the post-World War II era, Larkin was also a novelist and critic. In the following essay, he favorably reviews Selected Poems.

Finding Stevie Smith's Not Waving But Drowning in a bookshop one Christmas some years ago, I was sufficiently impressed by it to buy a number of copies for random distribution among friends. The surprise this caused them was partly, no doubt, due to the reaction that before the war led us to emend the celebrated cigarette-advertisement 'If So-and-So [usually a well-known theatrical personality] offered you a cigarette it would be a Kensitas' by substituting for the brand name the words bloody miracle. But equally they were, I think, bothered to know whether I seriously expected them to admire it. The more I insisted that I did, the more suspicious they became...