As late as the 1970s, it was hard to find Philip Larkin’s poetry in American bookstores. I remember searching all over Washington for his first collection, “The North Ship” (1945), before locating a paperback in the now long-gone Daedalus Bookshop next to the Uptown Theater. I already owned shabby copies of “The Less Deceived” (1955), “The Whitsun Weddings” (1964) and “High Windows” (1974), but I can no longer remember how I first discovered Larkin’s work.