Henley's never been afraid to show you his broken heart, or slap you in the head for a mis-step.
A Hole in My Heart is a slap in the face for the mainstream punters who cherished his 2000 hippie fable Together, and a test of nerve for those who stuck with him through the more bleak and melancholic Lilya 4-Ever.
But in its strongest moments, it's like spending a weekend with exasperating but beloved friends: full of jokes both witty and dirty, slap fights, heart-to-hearts, and an overwhelming good cheer that only occasionally teeters into sanctimony or sentiment.
He has been called cold, and indeed, his clinical honesty in matters of the human heart is a continuing slap in the face to the happy-ending land in which he operates.
For all that, Larkin did not believe poetry should be forbidding -- he once insisted any poem demanding more than an "understanding of the language it was written in, and a feeling heart" deserved to be "slapped down" -- and for new readers, an appropriately ingratiating volume of his work is now available.
Android OEM behemoth Samsung, meanwhile, has slapped a heart rate monitor on the rear of its latest flagship handset, the Galaxy S5.
But, we must take a moment to discuss how delightfully awful said special effects were in this scene and in the scene in which Marshall literally slaps the heart out of a man (fake Ted).
Jealousies erupt; passes are clumsily made, kisses exchanged, faces slapped, hearts elated and dashed.
"The preparing, sharing and consuming of food is so precious," he says, "because it lies slap at the heart of what it means to be human – to love, to relate, to plan, to feed, to enjoy and to share".
