Stop All the Clocks: Poems of Love and Loss

by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone . . .

W. H. Auden was the consummate poet of love and heartbreak. Stop All the Clocks presents a selection of his best known, most lucid poems, poems that pitch human frailty against a persisting desire for love and belonging.

Here are the anxieties that beset our waking and sleeping hours: the delirium of desire, the torture of unrequited love, the trauma of loss and displacement. And here, in these resonant, dazzling poems, is the understanding we might be looking for.

Genres: Poetry

48 pages, Hardcover

Published November 20, 2025

About the author

Poems, published in such collections as Look, Stranger! (1936) and The Shield of Achilles (1955), established importance of British-American writer and critic Wystan Hugh Auden in 20th-century literature.

In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.

He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.

Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.

People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.

From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.

Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.

The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.

Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.

He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.

Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."

He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.

After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t

Reviews

[Rosie Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 🌟 mostly too much rhyming but then some showstopping poems ???

[thehalcyondaysofsummer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

There cannot be many people who have not cried their eyes out at the scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where John Hannah puts his heart and soul into his recitation of Funeral Blues, at the funeral of his dead lover - I know I did. It beautifully conveys the utter devastation of raw grief, and it remains one of my favourite poems.


But I must admit that when it came to the work of W.H. Auden, I would have been hard put to name more than two poems by him, despite the fact that he was a prolific writer of poetry throughout his life -the other poem being, Tell Me The Truth About Love. So I was delighted to have the opportunity to discover more about Auden through this wonderful collection of his poems about love and loss, entitled with the first line from his most famous poem.


I was pleased to see that both the poems I am familiar with are included here: the rest of the book is a revelation. The most surprising thing is the incredible breadth of subject matter Auden explores when it comes to different facets of love and loss. There are poems here that instantly connect with relatable feelings about attraction, yearning, desire, romance, and enduring love, as well as the sting of rejection, long distance relationships, and the unbearable pain lost partners - but there are also reflections on belonging and identity, ideology and even the experience of refugees, which I was not expecting.  


After consuming all Auden's powerful lines, I found myself wanting to know more about the man himself and his inspirations. I ended up going down a rabbit hole about his life, which was fascinating, especially his relationship with Christopher Isherwood of Goodbye to Berlin (aka Cabaret) fame. 


This is a truly intriguing collection, which I can highly recommend to anyone who also wants to delve into Auden's work beyond Funeral Blues. It is beautifully produced in hard back, with lovely endpapers too!

[Olivia-Savannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprise, surprise, the reader who considers grief her subject of interest liked the poems on loss the most!

I would say that the first half of this collection focuses on love, and the second loss, so it was in the second half that I started enjoying this more.

There were a few war poems which were especially sad.

The meaning of each and every poem was quite clear. There are also some traditional poem forms/types in this collection, so I could see the patterning in the lines of verse.

I just didn't quite ever sync up with Auden's rhythms in his poems. The line breaks and commas threw me off. Which means they never quite became my favourite, but there were some poems that I really liked in here.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Stop All The Clocks by W. H. Auden

Funeral Blues, the poem from which the title line stems, has been my favourite poem ever since I heard it in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.

There are some beautiful poems here about war, love, loss, and grief that made the hairs on my arm stand up, and then there were some that, even after a couple of readings, I was still unsure what the author was trying to convey.

This is a gorgeous book to have on your shelf and would make a lovely present for someone.

[Aidan McBride · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the joy and whimsy you could feel in the early poems of the love he had for his partner. Then later we get the loss and you can feel his heart wrench but still keeps his rhythm. I thoroughly enjoyed his poetry.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the ones in the first half the most!

[afra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its a great poem book. I talked about the book to my followers on my Instagram page. (for more: instagram.com/afrareads)

This is an ARC review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for kindly sending me this physical copy in exchange for an honest review.