The essential pocket edition of this most beloved and quoted of poets.

Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

In lines perfectly constructed and as beautiful as they are plain-spoken, Philip Larkin found a way of delineating our most difficult emotions - giving them back to us in images and formulations that help us both comprehend and contain ourselves. His is a fine-tuning that turns 'true and kind' more truthfully into 'not untrue and not unkind.' These are poems to live with and through, from the trenchant assertion of 'They f**k you up. . .', to the transcendent image-making of 'High Windows':

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.