Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957

by W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden was once described as the Picasso of modern poetry - a tribute to his ceaseless experimentation with form and subject matter. Beginning with Anglo-Saxon poetry and ending with an Horatian expansiveness and conversational sweep, this volume should be essential reading for anyone seriously interested in modern poetry after T.S. Eliot. In his lifetime a controversial, outspoken, yet enigmatic, writer, Auden has gradually come to seem an intimate poet, as we have learned to read him correctly. This volume an introduction to his consummate craftsmanship and his unparalleled originality which made him the master-poet of his generation.

Genres: Poetry, Literature, 20th Century, Anthologies, British Literature, Fiction

351 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

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

[Ulysse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Centosei

There was a hard worker called Wystan
Whose mind produced poems like a piston
In the factory of the heart
The conveyor belt of art
Rolled out the great verses of Wystan

A sinistra... / A destra...


.

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainly, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so enamoured with Auden’s work that I’m reading my way through his oeuvre (next on the list will be Collected Longer Poems or The Dyers Hand).

I rationed out these poems over the span of a stressful couple of months so I didn’t run out of them. Auden’s control over language is only surpassed by his intuitive understanding of emotions & wry sense of humour. No poem of his feels melodramatic or whiney (like many of the Morrissey-complex poets of his context, but I won’t name names or I’ll get in trouble!) Poets who prolifically use rhyme can sometimes be a train-wreck to read, but whenever he does is it its his own Guernica.

It was refreshing to see a chronology of his work. It showed me that someone who is a deified figure in my mind was indeed a mere mortal (!!) who didn’t start out by writing masterpieces (!!!!)

Some favourite poems from this collection include The Unknown Citizen, Heavy Date, In Transit, Victor…..

[sim ౨ৎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Cameron Cook]

I respect it, but I don't love it.

[Gavin Lightfoot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some amazing poems, but for me, a lot of them were a hard read, I think a classical education would have helped, alas not available in my comprehensive school.

[Patrick Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love Auden, this is the definitive collection. It comes in two volumes, the second a collection of longer poems. ‘The Age of Anxiety’ is also published separately with similar cover art.

This has always been one of my favorites:

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, guility, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find your mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is what it is

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Auden is a must read if you're interested in 20th century poetry in English.

[liz Schreiber Tai]

faves:
-1929
-as i walked out one evening
-first things first

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another lovely edition from the Folio Society, and another 'dip into' poetry book, I very seldom read poetry books from cover to cover but like to pick them up and read a few poems every so often. This book arrived today and so, of course I dipped into it...of course the poetry is wonderful, but what makes this book so lovely are the illustrations scattered throughout. If you like poetry as I do, I do think an illustrated edition is a particular delight, and this one really does delight both the eye and stir the heart.

[Tayylor]

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I'm sure that after I've read more poetry in general Auden will make more sense to me, but at present I find him very difficult. It feels like he expects his reader to have access to his mind - an access separate from the poetry he offers - to know what associations he personally feels exists between things and ideas. Unfortunately I just can't follow the majority of what he's on about, not even on a more intuitive and unconscious level.

[valenchus · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong

Me rompe me rompe me rompe.
Me hizo emocionar en frente de gente

[Dimitrii Ivanov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three decades' worth, roughly chronological - but if these are shorter, how epic his longer ones were? Many are funny, some profound.

[Missy]

Was pleased to see that someone had dog-eared "The More Loving One" in this collection of Auden's short poems. I found something comforting in that little folded corner, and in the poem itself: "Looking up at the stars, I know quite well/ That, for all they care, I can go to hell,/ But on earth indifference is the least/ We have to dread from man or beast."

[Wayne]

My chere poetical amie Norma has revived
my normally-on-a-straining-leash desire
to read MORE of Wystan Hugh Auden.

And how did she perform this minor miracle??
E-mailed me an essay from the latest London Review Of Books.
A stimulating essay.
On W.H.Auden.
So...I'm on the road again!!!!

Thanks Norma!!!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this with a growing sense of anti-climax. I had always regarded Auden as a poetic genius, but actually found many of the poems flat and wilfully obscure. Enough brilliance shone through to make it still an incredible body of work, and his erudition and technical ability still stagger the reader.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't read Auden in a while... This was a good way to get back into him. His shorter verse still deals with the metaphysical and moral questions that he and Eliot focused so much on but in a more acute manner... If that makes sense.

[Cheryl Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favourite is number XII in 'Twelve Songs' ".....O tell me the truth about love....." Used to know it off by heart. The other favourite is number IX, probably his most well known now " Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone......." Cue tears...

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know that I'm in the minority when it comes to Auden, but I've always found his poems to be a mixed bag at the least. Perhaps I prefer more lyrical poetry, and perhaps I'm just not modernist enough!

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was my introduction to W.H. Auden who has become my favorite poet.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishingly good book.

[Dinah Jefferies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another must read poet for me Musee de Beaux Arts and As I Walked Out One Evening are just magical.