(1922–1985)
English poet
Philip Larkin
Poetry (at any rate in my case) is like trying to remember a tune you’ve forgotten. All corrections are attempts to get nearer to the forgotten tune. A poem is written because the poet gets a sudden vision—lasting one second or less—and he attempts to express the whole of which the vision is a part.
Letter to J. B. Sutton, December 20, 1940, Selected Letters of Philip Larkin: 1940-1985 (New York: Faber & Faber, 1999).