Kasey writes recently in his blog limetree:

"I will partly retract my criticism of Larkin. He was a swine, but he had one thing over his American contemporaries: his meter was utterly convincing as the native discourse of his psyche."

How true! Larkin's form is perfectly apt for the purpose for which he put it. I remember reading Larkin for the first time and hating him instinctively--while realizing at the same time that he knew perfectly well what he was doing.

I'm tired of being the prosody bully, though. I think I'll give it a rest and go back to being the translation bully.