He did listen patiently to my enthusiasm for D.H. Lawrence, remarking simply, ‘The shape of a poem by Lawrence is the shape of the words on the page; the shape of a poem by Yeats is the shape of the instrument on which the poem is played.’ I saw instantly what he meant, and asked him if he thought form so important. ‘Poetry rhymes all along the lines, not only at the ends,’ he pointed out. Talking about poetry with Vernon was just that: it wasn’t saying how bad so-and-so’s book was, or comparing royalty rates, or swapping gossip about famous drunks or love-affairs. He brought an immediate dignity to the subject, or rather he made it dignified simply by assuming it could never be anything else.
—Philip Larkin, in Vernon Watkins 1906-1967 (Faber and Faber, 1970), edited by Leslie Norris
22 December 2013