leonardcohenforum.com

WH Auden, born 100 years ago, was far from the effete
intellectual he might have seemed

http://www.booktrade.info/nr.php?id=9719

Hi David ~

This was rated 100% interesting and, indeed, it was... a complex figure of a man, to say the least, right down to "Miss Mess" and the speaker from the grave for the grieving New Yorkers after September 11, 2001... and EVREthing in between, before, and after.

I'm not recalling whether it was Auden, Keats, or Yeats that Judith cited as being your favourite. Reading this, it seems it may have been Auden... but, then, it may have been Keats or Yeats, too .

Anyway, thank you for posting this. It gives me a sense of who this famous writer was... and, before, I had no idea. Thanks.


~ Lizzy

Human nature never changes through the millennia. This is how a poem, decades old, can resonate so long after the ink dried and the poet died.

Today, Sunday 18 February 2007, at 4.30pm UK time, there ia a half hour programme called Poetry Please, in which some of the works of W H Auden will be presented and read.

This can be found on BBC Radio 4.

Part of the programme will include his American work.

This is the Link that will allow you to listen. (If you wan to)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/


If you miss the programme the link can take you to 'Listen Again.'

What a sad comment on British society that the recent Betjeman celebrations were of a significantly more extensive order than the Audens seem to be.

With no disrespect to the boy Betj, who was a perceptive and clever versifier, it's like comparing Boney M to Leonard Cohen.

Anyway - there is a South Bank programme tonight on WH (for those of you across the Atlantic, it's a prestigious beacon of reasonably serious arts commentary situated on the desolate shoreline of a lowest common denominator commercial TV station).

I don't know if he's my favourite poet as such, Lizzy, but I was exposed to some of his shorter poems at a relatively early age by an unusually brave and imagniative English teacher, and they made a significant impact.


All the best -


David

the ogre is not,and will not bee.
humans in society.not ME.
tHE SPIRIT wjthjn ONE man...................
can CRUSH him with ONE hand.


semaj............................

Byron wrote:Today, Sunday 18 February 2007, at 4.30pm UK time, there ia a half hour programme called Poetry Please, in which some of the works of W H Auden will be presented and read.

"Oh, let not time deceive you . . .."

Thank you, Byron, I'm listening as I send this message, just in time, it's thrilling. "You shall love your crooked neighbour with your crooked heart . . .."

Auden, as Mr. Gough is saying, Quintessential Auden. Thank you so much for making posters aware of this programme, it's mesmerising. Douglas Hodge does fine justice to the work of one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, of our time, for all time.

David, you're right; it's incomprehensible . . . No disrespect intended; but, Auden is simply magnificently matchless. What a lovely way to end this lovely day. Thank you again.

And, we've still to hear:

The Unknown Citizen
Excerpt from In Memory of W.B Yeats

But, no "Musée des Beaux Arts?"

I hope Andrew hears this instead of The Shipping Report; he holds his Winnie in high regard. Shiverous, hearing September 1, 1939. One wants to weep, it's so indescribably transporting; but, one fears one will not be able to cease weeping. Auden lives, though, forever. That much is absolutely true. What a mind!

BoHo
--
". . . In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."
— W. H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts"

In praise of ... WH Auden


Leader
Wednesday February 21, 2007
The Guardian


He was silly like us. Some say smelly too. There was lots to deplore about his behaviour, such as the drinking, the domineering manner and the name-dropping, and much to criticise about his life, above all the emigration to America in 1939, just as the nation stood alone. In politics, the left of his generation always mourned his renunciation of his engaged past, while contemporaries on the right deplored his homosexuality and desertion of his country.

Few writers mutilated their own work more often - for many years he deleted one of his most justly remembered lines, "We must love one another or die", from the poem in which it occurs. Yet Wystan Hugh Auden (as he gleefully pointed out, his name was an anagram of "hug a shady wet nun"), who was born in York a century ago today, an anniversary scandalously under-recognised by a culture that thrives on less worthy commemorations, now stands as England's greatest poet of the 20th century.

From his schooldays on, Auden's formidable and versatile muse rarely let him down. He experimented throughout his career yet, from the youthful hero-worship of The Orators to the wry poignancy of About the House, he remained a master of the English language. At his best, as in the "songs and other musical pieces" of the 1930s and 40s, he wrote impassioned and lovely verse that has become part of the national experience. As he himself wrote of Yeats, the gift survived it all, and the gift, in his case, was prodigious. Whatever else you do today, read some Auden.

Yet Wystan Hugh Auden (as he gleefully pointed out, his name was an anagram of "hug a shady wet nun"), . . .

... amongst other comments here about him, he seems to have had a touch of Layton in him . He was clearly a very interesting character as a person.


~ Lizzy

I noticed that from 9 'til 11 tonight on BBC4:

The Addictions of Sin
W H Auden in His Own Words

To commemorate the centenary of the birth of one of Britain's most influential and best-loved poets, this film combines dramatisations of telling events in the life of the WH Auden with interviews from the TV and radio archives and extracts from WH Auden's poetry, notebooks, letters and journals.

Thu 22 Feb, 21:00-22:00 60mins. Repeated at 1:40am Fri 23
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

W H Auden: Tell Me the Truth About Love
A look at the theme of love in the life of the poet W H Auden, who wrote such famous poems as Stop All The Clocks, Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love and As I Walked Out One Evening.

The film focuses on new interviews with Auden's close friends and looks at how his most important relationships were reflected in some of the greatest poems of the 20th century.

Thu 22 Feb, 22:00-23:00 60mins

David Birkett quoted from a Guardian article:

Few writers mutilated their own work more often - for many years he deleted one of his most justly remembered lines, "We must love one another or die", from the poem in which it occurs.

In an interview on the first TV programme, above, which I watched this weekend, Auden says he thought that line was "too high flown". And then, as an afterthought he said; "We must love one another *and* die."

"We must love one another, and die."

Has anyone ever framed the human condition with fewer words?

Diane

Diane wrote:
"We must love one another, and die."

Has anyone ever framed the human condition with fewer words?

Diane

"Craving attention, is low grade 'love'." - Grayson Perry.

"Suspiro ergo sum." - Me

"Suspiro ergo sum." - Me

According to dictionary.com, 'suspiro' means 'meringue'.

I am a meringue, therefore I am.

I am a cake made from a crisp cooked mixture of sugar and white of eggs, therefore I am.

I like this philosophy, Byron. Such a nice thought to go to bed on .

Diane

Erm.....

su-spiro.....to breathe deeply, to heave a sigh, to long for, to exhale.

I choose 'sigh'

"I sigh, therefore I am"

......because it carries much more of the human condition than, "cogito ergo sum" - "I think therefore I am"

I heard it somewhere, sometime, in a galaxy far, far away. Probably during a lecture. So at least I was awake for part of the time......I've never heard or read it, before or since. Which I think is a shame.

When I looked up for a latin meaning last night, I couldn't find anything. So, I looked up dictionary and found that definition. Because it rhymes - "I am a meringue therefore I am" - I thought that must be it - knowing your sense of humour. .

"I sigh therefore I am"

I really like that one, Byron. Much, much better than cogito ergo sum, yes.

"Carpe diem" has yet fewer words. Top that, if you can.

Diane