ABSTRACT
The twentieth century boasts a variety of disreputable figures. At first, it may have seemed as though the Anglo-American Modernists were the baddest of the bunch, guilty of expressing every conceivable prejudice. However, Larkin must surely win the blue ribbon for most-disliked poet of our age. A more gradual historical shift allows us to account, at least partially, for the unique tone of English verse in the 1950s: Andrew Motion refers to it as a “levelling democratizing process,” an admirably neutral phrase for a phenomenon bemoaned by many. At least since the Great War, the language of poetry had come closer to everyday language. “The Middlebrow Muse,” provocatively views it as the manifestation of an undesirable social condition: Movement spokespeople cater to the public’s thirst for novelty by proclaiming a new type of poet, and then proffer a safe, average-man persona, usually male, with nothing challenging or unusual to offer.
