“If you feel like asking me anything about my ‘works’ please do–the less great are probably far more explicit than the great, so it wouldn’t be like asking Mary McCarthy. On the other hand it is often better not to know things. I liked a poem of yours in the Listener some weeks ago–one rather puzzling line, but poets are not to be asked to explain why and how.”
Barbara Pym, letter to Philip Larkin (February 25, 1962)