On WH Auden (1) His Liberating Effect on Me

WH Auden

I think that we should all have one book that is really important to us – a book that we love above all others.

For me, that book is W H Auden’s Collected Shorter Poems. His work has enriched my life and a copy of this book travels with me wherever I go.

My first real encounter with the work of Auden was in the early 1970s, when I was living in Belfast and working at Queen’s University. I remember the precise moment when I walked past a library shelf and happened to notice a blue-bound book entitled Collected Shorter Poems.

I borrowed this book on impulse, and thus began a love affair with a body of poetry that has lasted the rest of my life; to discover him in a city torn by conflict, seemed somehow right.

Reference: Book of a lifetime: Collected Shorter Poems by WH Auden.

I share Alexander McCall Smith's love for Auden; rather, for me, it is matter of being taken by Auden.  My book is W.H. Auden: Selected Poems, edited by  Edward Mendelson (1979), the literary executor for Auden's estate.  I must've bought the book when it brand spanking new.  You see, back then, I stamped the date when I purchased a book:  SEP 24 1979.  I even taped a makeshift label of my name inside an opening page.  I bought the book as part of a poetry course with Mary Kinzie at Northwestern University.  I was beginning my junior year, and it was indeed the beginning a lifelong love affair with Auden.  To learn poetry from the masters, we wrote pastiche and one I wrote came back with praise from Kinzie: That Auden had a particularly liberating effect on my poetry!  I was on Cloud Nine. 

I know the first three poems that Smith refers to: In Memory of Sigmund Freud, Lullaby, and In Praise of Limestone.  Maybe Lullaby, but the other two are hardly short poems.  Maybe the operative word is shorter, as Auden did write much lengthier fare (e.g., The Sea and the Mirror).  But, no matter, these three poems find a masterful balance of lyrical and intellectual, and they resonate very well with my personal makeup.  I've often said that the way to my heart was through my head: Provoke my thinking, stimulate my mind, capture my imagination, and you will make me love you.  In his own inimitable way, Auden taught me how to read my heart and the heart of others.