Collected Poems (Modern Library)

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Collected Poems (Modern Library)
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To commemorate the centennial of W. H. Audenâ€™s birth, the Modern Library offers this elegant edition of the collected poems of one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.

This volume includes all the poems that Auden wished to preserve, in a text that includes his final revisions, with corrections based on the latest research. Auden divided his poems into sections that corresponded to what he referred to as chapters in his life, each one beginning with a change in his inner life or external circumstances: the moment in 1933 when he first knew â€œexactly what it means to love oneâ€™s neighbor as oneselfâ€; his move from Britain to America in 1939; his first summer in Italy in 1948; his move to a summerhouse in Austria in 1958; and his return to England in 1972.

Audenâ€™s work has perhaps the widest range and the greatest depth of any English poet of the past three centuries. From the anxious warnings of his early verse through the expansive historical perspectives of his middle years to the celebrations and thanksgiving in his later work, Auden wrote in a voice that addressed readers personally rather than as part of a collective audience. His styles and forms extend from ballads and songs to haiku and limericks to sonnets, sestinas, prose poems, and dozens of other constructions of his own invention. His tone ranges from spirited comedy to memorable profundityâ€“often within the same work. His poems manage to be secular and sacred, philosophical and erotic, personal and universal.

â€œAll the poems I have written were written for love,â€ Auden once said. This book includes his famous early poems about transient love (â€œLay your sleeping head, my love,â€ â€œStop all the clocks, cut off the telephoneâ€) and his later poems about enduring love (â€œIn Sickness and in Health,â€ â€œFirst Things Firstâ€). The book also includes Audenâ€™s longer, more thematically varied poems, from the expressionist charade â€œPaid on Both Sidesâ€ to the formal couplets of â€œNew Year Letterâ€; the darkly comic sequel to The Tempest, â€œThe Sea and the Mirrorâ€; and a baroque eclogue set in a wartime bar, â€œThe Age of Anxiety.â€

This new edition includes a critical appreciation of Auden by Edward Mendelson, the editor of the present volume and Audenâ€™s literary executor.

â€œW. H. Auden had the greatest gifts of any of our poets in the twentieth century, the greatest lap full of seed.â€
â€“James Fenton, The New York Review of Books

â€œAt the beginning of the new century, [Auden] is an indispensable poet. Even people who donâ€™t read poems often turn to poetry at moments when it matters, and Auden matters now.â€
â€“Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
Country USA
Brand Modern Library
Manufacturer Modern Library
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber 9780679643500
Color Multicolor
ReleaseDate 2007-02-13
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780679643500

Country	USA
Brand	Modern Library
Manufacturer	Modern Library
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	9780679643500
Color	Multicolor
ReleaseDate	2007-02-13
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780679643500

Collected Poems (Modern Library)

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