*Starred Review* The most popular poet of his time in England, Larkin (1922-85) bids fair to becoming the best-loved English poet of the latter twentieth century. To 116 pages of work published in his lifetime, this complete edition of his poetry adds 203 pages of poems he chose not to publish. Such inclusiveness often gives us too much of good thing; that is hardly the case here. Keenly intelligent and knowledgeable, a master of formal poetry, given to the epigrammatic, yet undogmatically modernist in choosing to write of observable common life, his own and what he saw of others', both of his class and, quite often, not Larkin never restrained his negative emotions but was not overpowered by them. He's no male Dorothy Parker, despite his possibly most famous line, They fuck you up, your mum and dad. He realized there are no alternatives to the lives we have, and he did find bravery and joy in them (see The Whitsun Weddings ). Editor Burnett follows the poems proper with 339 pages of textual notes, tracing just about every source Larkin definitely drew upon or, even half-consciously, might have drawn upon. Except by citing Larkin's own remarks in letters and conversation, these are informative, not critical, notes. Make this the one Larkin collection to have and hold.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist

The poems of British master Philip Larkin (1922-1985), one of the great mid-century poets in English, have had a frustrating life since the death of their author: this is the third book of Larkin poems bearing the word Collected or Complete in their titles. The first Collected was an edition edited by Anthony Thwaite containing poems Larkin published during his lifetime as well as uncollected and unpublished work, all of its arranged in chronological order, dispensing with Larkin's own arrangement of his poems in his published books. The second Collected redressed this omission by publishing only those poems Larkin collected in the four volumes of poetry-The North Ship; The Less Deceived; The Whitsun Weddings; and the famous High Windows-as arranged in those original volumes. This third edition contains all the poems included in the previous volumes plus poems from Early Poems and Juvenilia as well as other scattered poems not previously published. Burnett also includes comprehensive notes. Larkin was a master versifier, but within strict meter and rhyme he could be both disarmingly casual and utterly precise, the only poet capable of turning a kind of grumpiness into transcendent truth telling: "Death," he notes, "is no different whined at than withstood." This will be an essential book for poetry lovers. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.