Samuel Smith’s Reviews > Collected Poems > Status Update
Samuel Smith
is on page 536 of 960
Part IX: The Age of Anxiety
Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for this book-length.... poem? Drama? Drama-poem?
It's a weird one to evaluate. I think the hardest part is the tone: it's hard to tell how serious he is, and if he's not serious, it's hard to say what the point of it is. It's a Christian poem about post-war industrial alienation, in alliterative verse. With a tongue in cheek?
Not my favorite section.
— Sep 26, 2024 03:04PM
Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for this book-length.... poem? Drama? Drama-poem?
It's a weird one to evaluate. I think the hardest part is the tone: it's hard to tell how serious he is, and if he's not serious, it's hard to say what the point of it is. It's a Christian poem about post-war industrial alienation, in alliterative verse. With a tongue in cheek?
Not my favorite section.
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Samuel’s Previous Updates
Samuel Smith
is on page 875 of 960
Part XII: 1958-1971
A lot of this section was bad: increasingly prosy and self-important, hyper-specific, "occasional poems," etc. But there were some high highs, including the sequence "Thanksgiving For A Habitat." This section is also interesting because one doesn't imagine Auden as living at the same time as Vietnam, the Beatles, the hippies, etc--though one is not surprised to learn that he didn't like them!
— Dec 13, 2024 08:05AM
A lot of this section was bad: increasingly prosy and self-important, hyper-specific, "occasional poems," etc. But there were some high highs, including the sequence "Thanksgiving For A Habitat." This section is also interesting because one doesn't imagine Auden as living at the same time as Vietnam, the Beatles, the hippies, etc--though one is not surprised to learn that he didn't like them!
Samuel Smith
is on page 667 of 960
Part XI: Dichtung Und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)
This was interesting--a sort of ars poetica for love poems, specifically. It feels like something that somebody else would probably like to study!
— Nov 16, 2024 09:49AM
This was interesting--a sort of ars poetica for love poems, specifically. It feels like something that somebody else would probably like to study!
Samuel Smith
is on page 649 of 960
Part X: 1948-1957
These are inconsistent in quality and trending toward prosiness. But the stand outs (especially The Shield of Achilles and the Horae Canonicae sequence) are very good.
— Nov 11, 2024 09:21AM
These are inconsistent in quality and trending toward prosiness. But the stand outs (especially The Shield of Achilles and the Horae Canonicae sequence) are very good.
Samuel Smith
is on page 445 of 960
Part 8: The Sea and the Mirror
This is on the short list of best things Auden wrote. It's a "commentary" in The Tempest by Shakespeare and is a hybrid of poetry and prose (not literary criticism). The highlight is a long, florid speech from Caliban to the audience. It certainly bears returning to, and this isn't the last time I'll read it.
— Sep 13, 2024 05:42PM
This is on the short list of best things Auden wrote. It's a "commentary" in The Tempest by Shakespeare and is a hybrid of poetry and prose (not literary criticism). The highlight is a long, florid speech from Caliban to the audience. It certainly bears returning to, and this isn't the last time I'll read it.
Samuel Smith
is on page 400 of 960
Part VII: For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio
I was not expecting to get much out of this, much less to get a twinge of legitimate nostalgia for my academic research. This weird little pageant play from 1942 is so clearly in conversation with T.S. Eliot's weird little pageant play The Rock, to which I devoted about 50 pages of my dissertation. There was probably an article to be written there.
— Sep 07, 2024 03:29PM
I was not expecting to get much out of this, much less to get a twinge of legitimate nostalgia for my academic research. This weird little pageant play from 1942 is so clearly in conversation with T.S. Eliot's weird little pageant play The Rock, to which I devoted about 50 pages of my dissertation. There was probably an article to be written there.
Samuel Smith
is on page 346 of 960
Well the 2nd half of this section (1939-1948) was much more uneven than the first, but there were still some highlights.
— Sep 03, 2024 08:45PM
Samuel Smith
is on page 300 of 960
Part VI(a): 1939-1947
I divided this part in half because there are a lot of poems and also this was my goal for August: getting to page 300. This is easily the best section so far. Lots of highlights but also a higher level overall. Includes my favorite Auden poem: "In Memory of W.B. Yeats." I noticed that there are a Lot of poems here from 1939; I wonder what was going on then 😅
— Aug 29, 2024 07:49AM
I divided this part in half because there are a lot of poems and also this was my goal for August: getting to page 300. This is easily the best section so far. Lots of highlights but also a higher level overall. Includes my favorite Auden poem: "In Memory of W.B. Yeats." I noticed that there are a Lot of poems here from 1939; I wonder what was going on then 😅
Samuel Smith
is on page 243 of 960
Part 5: New Year Letter
Another of these self-indulgent long poems where Auden is in Alexander Pope mode. Rhyming couplets of 8 syllables make it basically impossible to pay attention to what he's saying, punctuated, though, by interesting commentaries on current (in 1940) events and politics. Obviously a rich text for understanding his politics in that moment; I'm glad I don't have to care about that.
— Aug 15, 2024 11:58AM
Another of these self-indulgent long poems where Auden is in Alexander Pope mode. Rhyming couplets of 8 syllables make it basically impossible to pay attention to what he's saying, punctuated, though, by interesting commentaries on current (in 1940) events and politics. Obviously a rich text for understanding his politics in that moment; I'm glad I don't have to care about that.
Samuel Smith
is on page 199 of 960
Part IV: 1933-1938
The poems here are generally much better than in the first section of lyrics in the volume. Some of them are Great Poems, and some of them are hidden gems I hadn't encountered before. Most of them have at least one really good line or passage. But I was still struck by how uneven it is. There's lots of clunkiness (like, rhythmically) among the brilliant moments. Intrigued to read the next section!
— Jul 13, 2024 08:17AM
The poems here are generally much better than in the first section of lyrics in the volume. Some of them are Great Poems, and some of them are hidden gems I hadn't encountered before. Most of them have at least one really good line or passage. But I was still struck by how uneven it is. There's lots of clunkiness (like, rhythmically) among the brilliant moments. Intrigued to read the next section!
