Auden: Poems: Edited by Edward Mendelson (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) - Hardcover

Auden, W. H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679443673 ISBN 13: 9780679443674

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 1995

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"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?

About the Author:

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the wittiest and most worldly of English poetry's great twentieth century masters. His work ranges from the political to the religious, from the urbane to the romantic. He is also, with his exhilarating lyrical power and his understanding of love and longing in all their sacred and profane guises, an exemplary champion of human wisdom in its encounter with the mysteries of experience. More than any other poet, Auden used his poetry as an instrument to study the massive forces, dramas, and upheavals of the twentieth century, and his work displays an astonishing range of voice and breath of concern.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0679443673
• ISBN 13: 9780679443674
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Mendelson Edward