Philip Larkin in private was a frank curmudgeon, as these lines show:
If I could talk, I'd be a worthless prof
Every other year off
Just a jetset egghead, TLS toff
Not old toad: Frank Kermode.
The poem dates from 1978. Editor Archie Burnett recommends reading this poem alongside one beginning "A Lecturer in drip-dry shirt arrayed" with its sardonic view of jet-setting professors teaching creative writing in the States.
from Philip Larkin, The Complete Poems ed. Archue Burnett (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012). A paperback version of this essential volume has an official publication date of April 2.
