Philip Larkin’s Poetry: Themes, Form, Style, Imagery and Symbolism
High Windows.
In the first place, the poem entitles the reader to see Larkin through the eyes of
Jake Balokowsky, his fictitious biographer, but Larkin also ridicules this young
cosmopolitan scholar. Holderness’s Cleanth, Raymond, Kate, and Colin are both serious
and ludicrous. Holderness has created four possible scholars, and he does not say that
any of them are wrong.
He laughs at them, but does not reject their readings. In a Larkinesque manner,
he wears the masks of four critics to demonstrate the diversity of Larkin criticism.
In an earlier monograph (Philip Larkin, 1992), Regan outlines the main trends of
Larkin criticism. In so doing, he identifies a watershed: “After 1974, when High
Windows was publicated, the critical response to Larkin’s poetry shifted drastically;
Larkin came to be seen as a much more provocative, disquieting and ‘difficult’ writer
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