W.H. Auden Selected Poems

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Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) is a widely read man, well-versed with wellknown intellectuals, such as Freud, Marx, Lawrence, who immensely inspired his poetry. So magnetic was Audens name and presence that by 1939, then only 32 years old, he had become something of a monument of contemporary poets. Throughout the 1930s Auden had been recognised by the poets who are often thought of as belonging to Audens group Cecil Day Lewis, Auden himself, MacNeice and Stephen Spender. There is no gainsaying the fact that Auden had influenced many poets in Britain and America, who specifically assimilated his scientific outlook and technique of approach, and this is all that a great poet needs for his writing. He is a sort of musician and ritualist which makes Auden a poet with a difference. While teaching modern poetry to B.A (Hons.) and M.A. English students I invariably felt that the students, by and large, found Auden to be a difficult poet, and obscure. In this book, an attempt has been made to make Auden comprehensible and interesting to the students.