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W. H. Auden (1907
- 1973)
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 Auden
: Poems by W.
H. Auden
The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is
popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not
compromise content. Poems: Auden is just another reminder
of his exhilarating lyric power and his understanding of love and
longing in all their sacred and profane guises. One of English
poetry's great 20th century masters, Poems: Auden is the
short collection of an exemplary champion of human wisdom in its
encounter with the mysteries of experience.
"You
can never step in the same Auden twice," wrote the critic
Randall Jarrell, alluding both to the etymology of Auden's
name--which comes from river--and the rapid transformations
of his poetic style. Wystan Hugh Auden began as a cryptic voice of
the Thirties, with alluring yet mysterious creations like
"The Secret Agent." Next he made himself into the very
model of an engagé artist with "Refugee Blues"
or "Spain"--explicitly political utterances that the
poet later renounced. Finally, Auden shocked his public by moving
from England to the United States, where he fulfilled his ambition
to become a "minor Atlantic Goethe" (although many would
insist on calling him a major one). Early or late, however, the
music of Auden's verse is instantly recognizable, and
fantastically memorable. Readers need only hear "In Praise of
Limestone" or "The Fall of Rome" or "O Tell Me
the Truth About Love" a single time to have selected lines
imprinted on their brains. Nor did Auden ever lose his touch as
one of the sublime love poets of our age, which was evident from
the moment he published his celebrated "Lullaby":
"Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless
arm; / Time and fevers burn away / Individual beauty from /
Thoughtful children, and the grave / Proves the child ephemeral: /
But in my arms till break of day / Let the living creature lie /
Mortal, guilty, but to me / The entirely beautiful." So what
if his face got all wrinkled?
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Born in York, Auden studied at Oxford and lived
in Germany from 1928-29 before gaining prominence as one of
Britain's leading young writers in the 1930s. Auden traveled
widely working as a broadcast announcer for the Republican
government in Spain for a short time before going to Iceland,
China and the United States where he immigrated in 1939. He became
a United States citizen in 1946 and resided in New York before
living out his later years in Austria.
Auden married Erika Mann in 1935 to help her get
an exit visa out of Nazi Germany; the marriage was a formality but
the two became lifelong friends. Auden's longest romantic
relationship, however, was with Chester Kallman with whom he
shared an open relationship from 1939 until his death.
Auden did not categorize himself a gay poet, but
had no trouble with his sexual orientation. Knowledgeable readers
and associates knew Auden was gay, despite the fact that he never
published any of his blatantly homoerotic work under his own name.
Among that "blatant" work were sexually explicit poems
written in German in the 1920s, "Pleasure Island" and a
poem not included in any of his collections called "A Day for
a Lay" which describes the process of picking up and
performing oral sex on a 24-year-old mechanic named Bud.
Related Resources:
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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