Revealing the dark side of the best-loved English poet of his generation, the recently published biography and selected letters of Philip Larkin sent shock waves through the litera y world. How might readers respond to the work of a man who gleefully raved against women, minorities, and almost everybody else, including himself? Edward Hirsch ponders the question.
hilip Larkin has increasingly
come to seem the greatest English
poet after W. H. Auden, though
the word "great" is perhaps
mildly...