A Case for Auden
There are a number of poets I recall having to study at some point in my 16 straights years as a student. T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, and Emily Dickinson are classic repeat offenders.
Yet, one poet I can't recall ever learning about in my school years (although I'm sure his name came up at least once) was the poet W.H. Auden.
Let it be said, before I continue, that schools--Universities in particular--teach the Subject of Literature, along with most of the other Humanities subjects, quite naturally and logically, as a "Narrative," with various Chapters and Periods in time on which students focus. With each new era of focus, students learn about the trends of thought, or zeitgeist, of each period, along with the significant historical events that shaped the minds of the writers of the past. Thus, if an author, be a poet or a prose writer, happens to exist within a given time period, but does not fit into the overall zeitgeist of the time in which they live, or even sometimes reacts completely against it in a contrary way, they're often shoved to one side or relegated to a "lesser-class" of writer because they fail to fit the critical narrative.
It's for that reason, I believe anyway, that W.H. Auden isn't as well known as many of the authors who were his contemporaries.
Auden was a late-period modernist, meaning he was somewhat younger, but nonetheless part of, the same generation as other better-known authors such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. And like fellow writers William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe, he didn't rise to prominence until the 1930s, whereas most of the other aforementioned writers became prominent in the 1920s.
If you don't know what Modernism is in the literary sense, here's a crash course. Modernism, when talking about literature, is defined by a high degree of stylistic self-consciousness, heavy experimentation, subjectivity (lots of first-person and third-person limited), moral relativism (the lack of definite good/evil), coupled with an ironic and pessimistic view of the world.
Writers of this sort tended to focus, not on the past, but on the present. They tended to draw directly from personal experience as material for their work, almost without embellishment. (In truth, modernism was the dead-end of "realism," the extreme point at which writers found themselves when trying to depict what Reality was in their fiction).
More than anything though, Modernists were typically unprolific because they believed that every word they put down had to be precisely the right word (thus giving rise to the idea that to be an artist means to be in constant agony. See my James Joyce story in my first "writing about writing" essay), and they believed that they had to make their writing extremely difficult to read (again, see Joyce) believing that the more indirect and interpret-able their work was, the greater it was.
At the start of his writing life, Auden's poetry was very much in the modernist style of fragmented Imagism, pioneered by Pound and Eliot. His early poetry was almost as impenetrable as some of the passages of Pound's The Cantos or Eliot's The Waste Land.
However, as time pass and he wrote more, he abandoned this free verse (which Robert Frost once declared was like playing tennis without a net) in favor of formal poetry, and most of his famous poems came out of this time. Additionally, unlike most modernists, he was exceptionally prolific, producing poetry and essays on a broad range of subjects until the very end of his life.
It's for these reasons that I believe, he's been. overlooked for so long by the academic world. In short, for academics, Auden was too prolific, too traditional, and too accessible.
It's estimated by the few scholars dedicated to Auden's work that he produced over 400 poems (two of which were book-length works the size of the Odyssey, e.g. The Age of Anxiety), and several hundred essays on various topics and several plays. When a writer produces such a large body of work, scholars seem to hate studying them because of the sheer volume. How can they tell which ones are the best work? The only way is to read them all and compare them using some kind of criteria (which of course they don't want to do because they're lazy like most people).
Then there's the problem of Auden's lack of experimentation. As I said, his early work was in the vein of classic modernism (elusive, indirect, and fragmented). However, as time passed, he began producing work that was more formal, adopting classic forms like ballads, sonnets, and villanelles, but also simply writing poems that made use of classic poetic techniques like, rhyme and meter. Save for Robert Frost, who used these techniques throughout his career, no Modernists used these techniques. Though Auden wasn't above exploring non-traditional material in his poetry, the usage of traditional forms was seen as "old-fashioned," in direct contrast to Ezra Pound's dictum, "Make it new," hence why he's been overlooked by the canon: he simply doesn't fit their narrative.
It's for these very reasons, however, that Auden is still read by people outside of the classroom. Because he used these classic techniques, Auden's poetry became less obscure and more accessible. Thus, non-scholarly, everyday readers could enjoy his works without fear of being shut out by the obscure imagery.
I speak from experience that most of the books I read while I was in school I hated for no other reason than someone was telling me to read them (I have a pronounced streak of anti-authoritarianism in my personality). I've since reclaimed many of the books I read in school, like most of Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby (a topic I may discuss in the future).
The writers we find on our own rather than being prescribed, however, I find are the ones we enjoy most
Auden was a writer I discovered simply by reading randomly (random reading is the best kind of reading). The first poem of his I experienced was his famous, "O Tell Me the Truth About Love":
The wonderful rhythm of this poem, on this most quizzical of topics made me want to read more of poetry. From there I found yet another of his most famous works, "Funeral Blues," a poem immortalized by its use in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral:
However, the poem of Auden's that I believe chimes most with our times must be "Refugee Blues." This poem evokes images of WWII and the Holocaust, but its meaning, its resonance nonetheless evokes issues today, including the Syrian Refugee crisis:
Auden's vast canon of work provides readers with many different ways of approaching him and in general approaching poetry That he was willing to use so many different literary techniques and subsume a variety of topics as material for his poetry meant, in a sense, that he had something for everyone. That his poetry had entered into the vernacular and lexicon of everyday usage, much like some of Shakespeare's greatest lines, I believe is a sign of profound insight into human truth, as well as great writing. Thank god he hasn't simply been relegated to the classroom; Auden should be read (by those who are interested), and he should be enjoyed by anyone willing to open one of the volumes of his works.
Yet, one poet I can't recall ever learning about in my school years (although I'm sure his name came up at least once) was the poet W.H. Auden.
Let it be said, before I continue, that schools--Universities in particular--teach the Subject of Literature, along with most of the other Humanities subjects, quite naturally and logically, as a "Narrative," with various Chapters and Periods in time on which students focus. With each new era of focus, students learn about the trends of thought, or zeitgeist, of each period, along with the significant historical events that shaped the minds of the writers of the past. Thus, if an author, be a poet or a prose writer, happens to exist within a given time period, but does not fit into the overall zeitgeist of the time in which they live, or even sometimes reacts completely against it in a contrary way, they're often shoved to one side or relegated to a "lesser-class" of writer because they fail to fit the critical narrative.
It's for that reason, I believe anyway, that W.H. Auden isn't as well known as many of the authors who were his contemporaries.
Auden was a late-period modernist, meaning he was somewhat younger, but nonetheless part of, the same generation as other better-known authors such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. And like fellow writers William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, and Thomas Wolfe, he didn't rise to prominence until the 1930s, whereas most of the other aforementioned writers became prominent in the 1920s.
If you don't know what Modernism is in the literary sense, here's a crash course. Modernism, when talking about literature, is defined by a high degree of stylistic self-consciousness, heavy experimentation, subjectivity (lots of first-person and third-person limited), moral relativism (the lack of definite good/evil), coupled with an ironic and pessimistic view of the world.
Writers of this sort tended to focus, not on the past, but on the present. They tended to draw directly from personal experience as material for their work, almost without embellishment. (In truth, modernism was the dead-end of "realism," the extreme point at which writers found themselves when trying to depict what Reality was in their fiction).
More than anything though, Modernists were typically unprolific because they believed that every word they put down had to be precisely the right word (thus giving rise to the idea that to be an artist means to be in constant agony. See my James Joyce story in my first "writing about writing" essay), and they believed that they had to make their writing extremely difficult to read (again, see Joyce) believing that the more indirect and interpret-able their work was, the greater it was.
However, as time pass and he wrote more, he abandoned this free verse (which Robert Frost once declared was like playing tennis without a net) in favor of formal poetry, and most of his famous poems came out of this time. Additionally, unlike most modernists, he was exceptionally prolific, producing poetry and essays on a broad range of subjects until the very end of his life.
It's for these reasons that I believe, he's been. overlooked for so long by the academic world. In short, for academics, Auden was too prolific, too traditional, and too accessible.
It's estimated by the few scholars dedicated to Auden's work that he produced over 400 poems (two of which were book-length works the size of the Odyssey, e.g. The Age of Anxiety), and several hundred essays on various topics and several plays. When a writer produces such a large body of work, scholars seem to hate studying them because of the sheer volume. How can they tell which ones are the best work? The only way is to read them all and compare them using some kind of criteria (which of course they don't want to do because they're lazy like most people).
Then there's the problem of Auden's lack of experimentation. As I said, his early work was in the vein of classic modernism (elusive, indirect, and fragmented). However, as time passed, he began producing work that was more formal, adopting classic forms like ballads, sonnets, and villanelles, but also simply writing poems that made use of classic poetic techniques like, rhyme and meter. Save for Robert Frost, who used these techniques throughout his career, no Modernists used these techniques. Though Auden wasn't above exploring non-traditional material in his poetry, the usage of traditional forms was seen as "old-fashioned," in direct contrast to Ezra Pound's dictum, "Make it new," hence why he's been overlooked by the canon: he simply doesn't fit their narrative.
I speak from experience that most of the books I read while I was in school I hated for no other reason than someone was telling me to read them (I have a pronounced streak of anti-authoritarianism in my personality). I've since reclaimed many of the books I read in school, like most of Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby (a topic I may discuss in the future).
The writers we find on our own rather than being prescribed, however, I find are the ones we enjoy most
Auden was a writer I discovered simply by reading randomly (random reading is the best kind of reading). The first poem of his I experienced was his famous, "O Tell Me the Truth About Love":
However, the poem of Auden's that I believe chimes most with our times must be "Refugee Blues." This poem evokes images of WWII and the Holocaust, but its meaning, its resonance nonetheless evokes issues today, including the Syrian Refugee crisis:
Auden's vast canon of work provides readers with many different ways of approaching him and in general approaching poetry That he was willing to use so many different literary techniques and subsume a variety of topics as material for his poetry meant, in a sense, that he had something for everyone. That his poetry had entered into the vernacular and lexicon of everyday usage, much like some of Shakespeare's greatest lines, I believe is a sign of profound insight into human truth, as well as great writing. Thank god he hasn't simply been relegated to the classroom; Auden should be read (by those who are interested), and he should be enjoyed by anyone willing to open one of the volumes of his works.
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