A very pleasant acquaintance, Madge McKeithen, a poet (and prof at the New School), sums up our conversation about Philip Larkin in her on-going Best American Poetry blog (http://www.madgemckeithen.com/new-york/on-going/):
 
-- A highlight of blogging for Best American Poetry last week (see “This Be the Poet”) on the Poetry Society of America’s Larkin event at Cooper Union was the quick conversation beforehand with Aaron Poochigian about Larkin’s work. In less than two minutes in the break room at Paragraph, Aaron focused my attention on the poet’s forms and subjects, emphasizing his essential avoidance of sentimentality, his centrality to the development of contemporary poetry, and the Expressionist brilliance in the ending of “High Windows.”--
 
I was flattered by the way she gave a shout-out for “The Cosmic Purr” (I’m in good company):
 
-- With your next meal — alone or with another — and surely with food, read poems. A suggested list, to start:
 
Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses”
Larkin’s “Church Going“. (listen on YouTube or read in the new The Complete Poems. edited by Archie Burnett (FSG, 2012)
Poochigian’s poems in 2011 in The Dark Horse or in his Cosmic Purr
Seshadri’s “The Descent of Man.”
Berryman’s Dream Song 29