REQUIRED WRITING: MISCELLANEOUS PIECES 1955-1982 by Philip Larkin; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 328 pages; $17.95
If merit determines Britain's next poet laureatenot necessarily a safe assumptionthen Philip Larkin, 61, will get the job. In that event, the Queen's subjects had better brace themselves for a jolt. Larkin can speak for England, but it is the gray, postimperial England of rationed hopes and undercutting humor, the England of Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, which was dedicated to Larkin and is regarded as his youthful portrait.
Larkin, Librarian of the University of Hull since 1956, feels a...
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