Auden's poetry appears to be much more straight-forward than other poets, probably because he uses less subtle yet precise imagery. I was also impressed by the fact that he seems to master many different forms ! We can feel that he is keen on writing about time and nature and those themes are more down to earth than sadness or love or success for example. My favourite poem so far is "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" because it gives an insight into this psychiatrist's life and "it's news that stays news" !
When I read the first poem from W. H. Auden’s Selected Poems, I wanted to underline every word I didn’t know and ended up underlining the whole poem. I then decided to change my method and tried to get the general meaning of each poem rather than completely understanding each of them. And even though this objective was way easier, lots of poems stayed very obscure to me at the beginning. I had to get used to the way Auden was writing and expressing ideas to begin to appreciate his work. For example, I found some of his poems about travels very interesting, and I was touched by his way of conveying emotions while dealing with war, liberty, love or death. However, Auden’s use of varied references sometimes hindered me from understanding some of the images and I found some poems very long (especially the one partially written in prose). To conclude I would say that I quite enjoyed it, but that I would not read it just for fun.
When I first read Auden's Selected poems I thought that his poetry was really riveting in the way that it really deals with lots of different topics which can be either quite vague or very serious (for instance the few poems about the war). As I read the book I paid much more attention to the content and themes of the poems than the form of the poem itself, even though he uses lots of different forms. I thought that his poetry is enjoyable to read even though I had to stop to look up words pretty often. It was more entertaining than what I thought reading this book would be. What's more, every poem surprised me and were always different even when they delt about the same things thanks to the varried use of language and different techniques. The reader may relate to the words of the poet and can learn from what's expressed in them and it makes the reading a lot more lively. I found his poetry beautiful especially the sadder poems of the book because to me the feelings evoked in the poems were developped in a way that would strike and touch the reader.
What struck me the most in W.H. Auden's poetry was his versatility. Firstly in form; he uses various meter and rhyming schemes and can also write in free verse or in prose. For the poems' lengths, it goes from haikus to forty pages-long poems. Other than form, he also writes on many different themes such as love and nature in addition to using his poetry as a political tool. His engagement is very present in his work. One of my favorite poems is Refugee Blues. It's about the rise of nazism and the upcoming World War (he wrote it in March 1939). The writing is very clear and straightforward (which is not the case in all of his poems), although the poetic aspect is not neglected! Indeed, his stanzas are composed of a rhyming couplet followed by a repeated phrase. The repetition of this same structure creates monotony that enforces the despair of the poet's thoughts and observations concerning nazism and the war.
What is striking about W.H. Auden's writing is his capability of making a similar subject sound totally different. Indeed, the emotion that arises from two poems on the same subject, such as love or description of war scenes, will never be alike. To achieve this goal of giving a different view on what, at first view, looked like a common theme, Auden uses what we first see in his poem : form. Thus, it looks like no one of his poems is alike in terms of meter, rhyming schemes and lengths. If some of them are very short (half a page), others can be several pages long, and in addition to that, if poems are easily recognizable by their writing in verse, some of Auden's are in prose. Apart from the form, Auden's writing can be recognize in his way of using irony. Indeed, we could define him as an engaged writter for he states things clearly and is not afraid of describing them. Médélice
W.H. Auden’s Selected Poems was the first English collection of poems I have ever read. Therefore, it took me a little time of adaptation to conceive how I had to read it in order to unravel each poem. I found Auden’s poetry full of his historical context; which is really interesting given the period. I also enjoyed seeing his poems’ evolution through time. That was a real pleasure for a first reading of English poetry collection despite that I had often to stop my reading in order to look for some words in the dictionary. Elodie
W.H Auden's poetry gave me a hard time. However, I'm sujugated by the straightforwardness and brutality in the poetry, being a little bit similar to dystopia. Seldom I found bubbly, funny or sugar coated description in his work, he states and describes life as he lived it : harsh. His work seems to be a constant reminder of the miserable condition of society. What's more, although he doesn't directly call upon citizens to riot, his words have the enability to rattle one's mind. The evocative words in his masterpieces bounces like contradiction to the restriction implemented by the diverse totalitarian regimes of his time. As far as the form's concerned, his will to show the "reality", "what we do not like" to see, goes as far as to use different types of meters, rhymes and even stripping his poetry of any rules so that the reader will be totaly focused on the theme. Macha
The first day I picked up W.H Auden’s book and I began reading the first poem I was completely baffled. I noticed on the first his distinct and intricate style of writing which took me a while to fully comprehend. What struck me most was no doubt his constant evolution from being very vague and using a lot of profound imagery to being very candid to the point of obviousness, that took me aback and I found it very impressive. My favorite poem is undoubtedly “O tell me the truth about love” because amid all the sorrowful, convoluted poems about war this one manages to be brief with a touch of humor. He also talked about love in a unique way.
I had at first some difficulties to understand W. H. Auden’s poetry; I was mainly impeded by the sometimes unclear syntax but, as I read through different poems and got used to Auden’s dynamic and straightforward style, I began to appreciate his evocative imagery and often self-inspired stories. The most meaningful poems to me, are those dealing with nature, love or grief, while I found less interest in the History or Literature related ones, perhaps because of the numerous references I did not understand and the author’s more distant approach. The poems I liked the most are “Look, stranger, at this island now”, because Auden addresses directly the reader and makes us discover a both calm and violent image of the sea, as well as “Funeral Blues”, which I found surprising by mingling an energetic rhythm with the themes of grief and mourning. Auden’s poetry is surprising: forthright, albeit subtle.
It took me time to adjust to Auden's poetry; I didn't understand a lot of words and he uses long sentences. However, more I read, more I liked it. I definitely loved his way of employing so many different forms and lengths: some are really short, others have long stanzas. It was so lively, we couldn't get bored. I also appreciate that his poetry is about many subjects, even though we recognize recurrent themes. I was less moved by his poems about war and society which were dark (but according to his time we can understand). I enjoyed much more his Nature and Love's ones. Nevertheless, my favorite poems were those composed of smaller ones like "In Time of War", "The Quest" and "Bucolics". I especially appreciated them because they relate stories and we can see some evolution in the characters. Otherwise, Auden doesn't use a lot of references, it is then easier for us to understand his meaning.
To be completely honest, I opened the book expecting certain themes and a writing style that i had assumed would be prevalent after having formerly heard his poem 'Funeral Blues' that I, frankly, did not like that much. However, after reading a few other ones, I was immediatly amazed by the diversity of the themes, structures and styles of the poems. Auden manages to touch on everything: prose and verse, war and love, nature and death, six-verses-long epitaphs and forty-two-pages-long commentary on a Shakespeare play, complex poems full of mysterious metaphors and others extremely straight-forward anc clear, all of this while still managing to have a style of his own, not having his works sound like they were all written by a different author. This diversity ensures that everyone will find something to love and something to hate in this selection, and I strongly believe that it would be extremely difficult to find one poem to introduce and sum up Auden's work.
What really struck me with Auden’s poetry is its modernity. For some poems, I got through the end appreciating the rhythm, enjoying how the different sonorities were balanced and somehow, evoked emotions. However, if somebody would have asked what it was about, I’d stay stuck, even if I searched for all the words I couldn’t understand. Words, separate from each other were comprehensible, when they were put together in a stanza, nothing came out of it. But as an overall, I felt that his poetry was much more down-to-earth than everything I’ve studied or read so far in english. The themes as well are very varied, none of the poems are exalting the unstoppable power of love or nature’s beauty as would be expected reading poetry. It seems that his poetry is reflecting the reaction inspired by his surroundings, his daily life, his readings…etc. It seems real. His writing is measured. Indeed unlike the romantic poetry, I didn’t find any grandiloquent imageries. The poetry is more “conventional” than the French Surrealists’ regarding the style but concerning the themes, I sometimes found some parallels for the everyday poetry, with nothing pompous. I guess a lightening textual analysis could cope with the references’ problems and clear the dissimulated meaning of some poems, offering the real interest of Auden’s poetry.
Poems I’ve read before, either in English or French, are very different from Auden’s. One of the reasons for that is that his poems offer a great diversity in form, something appreciable for the reader who experiences each time a new discovery. Indeed, Auden constantly plays with the ever-changing number of stanzas and lines it contains, the presence of rhymes and pattern of meter (or not) and sometimes the use of prose in order to create different atmospheres and convey various emotions. Besides, Auden distinguishes himself by his down-to-earth approach to poetry which is as unusual as it is surprising. One striking example of this is his poem “Funeral Blues” in which he attaches importance to concrete elements of our daily lives in order to share his very realistic vision of death. His preference for simple words which will produce a much stronger impact on his reader is a characteristic I particularly loved. Finally, Auden’s sensibility and remarkable lucidity regarding events of his time is praiseworthy.
I was at first a bit confused by Auden's peotry, particularly the syntax, I sometimes had to read a stanza three times to understand it. Understranding some of the poems as a whole was also a struggle : it was rather like a puzzle, I had all the separate pieces but I failed to put them together, like I was missing a reference, a hint, to form the final picture. I enjoyed reading those like I enjoy reading T.S Eliot, apreciating the way words flowed from one poem to another, what would first spring into my mind when I read a sentence, reading it like a foreign langage. I’m quite fond of poetry, from the short, free verse poems of Bukowski to the long ballads of Keats, and I tend to chose my favourites on their style, on what feelings they convey through their words. Reading Auden was a bit like that, some of the poems really made me feel something, even if I could not quite grasp the general sense of them. I also admired his diversity, how he could go from very long, almost narrative, poems to short, rapid ones and explore such different themes through them amazed me. My favourites were “O who can ever gaze his fill” ; Lay your sleeping head, my love ; and Will you turn a deaf ear, all illustrating this same diversity of subject and style. In short I got the whole spiritual connection-mystical part, I now need a more thorough insight and some deep analytical skills (alas I always do).
When I began to read W. H. Auden's Selected Poems I opened the book at a random page. My enthiousiasm went down when I realised I could barely understand anything... I went back to the first page and finally got used to Auden's way of writing. The variety of forms and themes he uses impressed me. The first half of the 20th Century was physically and mentally hard and eventhough I could not understand every detail either because of the writing scheme or my cultural knowledge being not expanded enough, I could feel the atmosphere of his poems. Plus, Auden doesn't try to escape from the surrounding world and gives us a striking description of reality. My favorite poems are "Funeral Blues" and "Epitaph on a Tyrant". The second poem might be short but describes perfectly how a tyrant thinks and what are the consequences, and also tells us how well Auden knows mankind. To put it in a nutshell, Auden's poems might be difficult to enjoy at the beginning, but when understood they give us a daunting image of the real world of the 20th century without taboo. Valentine Raimbault.
Because it is the first element you notice when looking at any type of written work, what struck me most when I first leafed through the pages of the book was the very varied and different forms the texts could take. Indeed, some of the poems are several pages long, whereas others are just a few lines. It is interesting to notice that Auden did not choose a definite and unique form (verse, prose) for his work. What also surprised me was the fact that most of the time there was no title to the poems. I was sometimes (often!) confused by the grammatical structure of the verses which made it somewhat difficult to understand the poems. However I realized that it was not always necessary to understand the literal meaning of the words to appreciate the poem itself. I also felt that the themes explored by Auden in his poetry were varied (i.e.: love, war, freedom) but yet connected to one another because they represent most of the aspects of Human experience. The chronological way the collection is organized also serves to show the evolution of Auden’s poetry, displaying almost 50 years of work, which I found really impressive. Zoe Ferdjani
When I read the first poems of Auden's Selected Poems, I must admit that they made little impression on me, because I couldn't find their general meaning. However, when I read the later poems, which were easier to understand, I found them noteworthy. I really loved the sincerity Auden shows in his poetry, whether he writes about the world he lives in or the personal feelings he experienced in his life. Concerning the style, I was impressed by the purity of his poetry, both in rhythm and language, whch allows him to convey his ideas and emotions efficiently. Lucie
Auden has astonished me with the extremely profund knowledge of the human kind reflected in the poems.The language, imagery and form used are polished, mastered,and always relevant and coherant with the themes and various atmospheres conveyed in order to create meaning. Some poems are the expression of a wise soul dominated by reason, always willing to take a step back and approach life and events as justly as it can be done, while others appeal to me as the laying bare, the praise of the unique individual's ability to feel, the variety of human thoughts and emotions, the power of passion. Moreover Auden takes perticular care to incarnate his generation as obectively and as deeply as it can be done, neither embelishing the past nor idealizing the future, and to me that is where his modernity comes from.
After reading several poems by Auden, I noticed the purity of his words, emotions and thoughts. Indeed, he approaches serious themes with a disconcerting lightness. A striking example of that is Miss Gee which talks about a girl that feels alone and ends up hanged and dissected by students. It was definitely my favorite one and the one that touched me the most. However, I found the poems hard to understand because of the rich vocabulary and various imageries. Also, I had to take a certain time to think about them to fully appreciate them; it’s not the kind of book that you read cover to cover.
To my mind, Auden’s poems required a certain maturity and knowledge. What I want to say is that I’m not one of those who can feel and approach this kind of poetry effortlessly. Though several poems were quite clear, others seemed to me somewhat distant. Presently I still cannot construe the meaning of some. Nonetheless for those who were affordable I retain a certain straightforward style, strewn with little touches of lightness to much deeper. One that illustrates this point would be Calypso. He ended up it by admitting that “love’s more important and powerful than even a priest or a politician”. I admire the way he compares a strong feeling into fields that should not (normally) be linked with. Furthermore we can at ease understand his opinion regarding these. I like it. Lastly, to go back to what I was saying about the difficulties I met while reading his selected poems, I can’t wait to learn more about him and his works, in order to know who was this man and what he wanted to say.
Poetry is an art that always seems (in my opinion) complicated to comprehend because of its abstruse words and its profound and recondite meanings. Here in Auden's poetry, I was gladly surprised and attracted by his simple style of writing with clear and unambiguous words and themes. The collection of selected poems was a bit too long for me to read cover to cover in one hit, so I just opened the book, flicked through the pages and read (lets be honest) any short work of poetry I could find. Every time, I was astounded to land on Love or Nature poems full of emotion, strong imagery and sensorial descriptions. Sometimes, I also discovered gloomy and sorrowful but very moving poems about war, not surprising as this theme personally concerned the author, since he lived during both World Wars.
When I think about poetry and studying it at school, I associate it with a certain form of hardship. I become aware of the impediment of being French more than ever. This feeling followed me along the pages of Auden’s work as I’m still having quite a hard time getting the meaning of most of the poems. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading them and found myself lingering on some passages every now and then, appreciating a particular arrangement of words, a rhythm or the sound of a verse in my head. Keeping in mind the fact that there would be some deeper studying of these poems, I read with a pinch of excitement knowing that it would become even more interesting during the school year.
Though hard to understand due to the vocabulary used, but also to the structure of the verses themself, W.H Auden's poetry successfully achieves to create different interesting atmospheres through the impact of the words he carefully chooses to use. It goes from eerie, oppressing poems such as "Dover" to poems in which he expresses his love like in the one called "Calypso". An other characteristic that I found while reading Auden's poems was the fact that he associates a poetic sensibility with the quality of a storyteller. Indeed, a lot of his poems are actually written like parts of a novel (except for the form, obviously), telling a story or describing a situation/place/person, while keeping the writing beautiful and poetic. In short, i enjoyed reading his poems mostly because of the atmosphere and feelings they carried, even though I had a hard time understanding some of them. Gaspard
Before reading Auden's poems, I was afraid to feel uncomfortable with this unknown time period and type of poetry in which I was cast. But after decrypting the first poems, I realized how interersting was the way the poet involved the beauty of the word and the thoughts behind them (with a precise message). I want to explore the links between those topics and the time period they were written, because I am still trying to figure out how the chronology, between the first poem in August 1927 and the last one in August 1973, affects Auden's writing (its evolution). My favorite poem, and I can't explain why, is “O Tell Me the Truth About Love”, which seem a bit absurd at first. But my choice will certainly change after re-reading and re-exploring more deeply all of them.
One would agree on the fact that the harshness to understand the meaning of Auden's poetry is primarily due to his wide range of vocabulary. Nonetheless, by a profusion of details such as the feet he chooses and the rhymes he elaborates, another language is distiled. Auden gives birth to a language solely musical emulating the fluidity of water. As an example, the message poem V "Watch any day his nonchalant pauses,see" intends to transmit, is still, after many readings, very obscure to me but the beauty resides in the way the words seem to respond to one another.
Unfortunately, poetry always seemed to appear to me as a foreign language. After reading W.H Auden's first poem, I frankly knew this poet wouldn't be the one reconciling me with this kind of literature. Yet, I was surprise to realize how some of these poems appealed to me, in a way I couldn't even describe. Auden's poetry clearly demonstrates his mastery of the use of words and the power he gives them, with which he conveys gripping atmosperes. I even happened to like the fact I didn't get all his poetry after a first reading; having to look up words, trying to surmise what Auden tried to convey appeared to be quite gripping. One of my favorite poems would be "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone..." because I was struck by all the different themes within one poem, all the varied words and ideas I would have never thought to assemble.
Auden's poetry appears to be much more straight-forward than other poets, probably because he uses less subtle yet precise imagery. I was also impressed by the fact that he seems to master many different forms ! We can feel that he is keen on writing about time and nature and those themes are more down to earth than sadness or love or success for example. My favourite poem so far is "In Memory of Sigmund Freud" because it gives an insight into this psychiatrist's life and "it's news that stays news" !
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the first poem from W. H. Auden’s Selected Poems, I wanted to underline every word I didn’t know and ended up underlining the whole poem. I then decided to change my method and tried to get the general meaning of each poem rather than completely understanding each of them. And even though this objective was way easier, lots of poems stayed very obscure to me at the beginning. I had to get used to the way Auden was writing and expressing ideas to begin to appreciate his work. For example, I found some of his poems about travels very interesting, and I was touched by his way of conveying emotions while dealing with war, liberty, love or death. However, Auden’s use of varied references sometimes hindered me from understanding some of the images and I found some poems very long (especially the one partially written in prose). To conclude I would say that I quite enjoyed it, but that I would not read it just for fun.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read Auden's Selected poems I thought that his poetry was really riveting in the way that it really deals with lots of different topics which can be either quite vague or very serious (for instance the few poems about the war). As I read the book I paid much more attention to the content and themes of the poems than the form of the poem itself, even though he uses lots of different forms. I thought that his poetry is enjoyable to read even though I had to stop to look up words pretty often. It was more entertaining than what I thought reading this book would be. What's more, every poem surprised me and were always different even when they delt about the same things thanks to the varried use of language and different techniques. The reader may relate to the words of the poet and can learn from what's expressed in them and it makes the reading a lot more lively. I found his poetry beautiful especially the sadder poems of the book because to me the feelings evoked in the poems were developped in a way that would strike and touch the reader.
ReplyDeleteEmma Ballay
What struck me the most in W.H. Auden's poetry was his versatility. Firstly in form; he uses various meter and rhyming schemes and can also write in free verse or in prose. For the poems' lengths, it goes from haikus to forty pages-long poems. Other than form, he also writes on many different themes such as love and nature in addition to using his poetry as a political tool. His engagement is very present in his work.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite poems is Refugee Blues. It's about the rise of nazism and the upcoming World War (he wrote it in March 1939). The writing is very clear and straightforward (which is not the case in all of his poems), although the poetic aspect is not neglected! Indeed, his stanzas are composed of a rhyming couplet followed by a repeated phrase. The repetition of this same structure creates monotony that enforces the despair of the poet's thoughts and observations concerning nazism and the war.
Tom
What is striking about W.H. Auden's writing is his capability of making a similar subject sound totally different. Indeed, the emotion that arises from two poems on the same subject, such as love or description of war scenes, will never be alike. To achieve this goal of giving a different view on what, at first view, looked like a common theme, Auden uses what we first see in his poem : form. Thus, it looks like no one of his poems is alike in terms of meter, rhyming schemes and lengths. If some of them are very short (half a page), others can be several pages long, and in addition to that, if poems are easily recognizable by their writing in verse, some of Auden's are in prose. Apart from the form, Auden's writing can be recognize in his way of using irony. Indeed, we could define him as an engaged writter for he states things clearly and is not afraid of describing them.
ReplyDeleteMédélice
W.H. Auden’s Selected Poems was the first English collection of poems I have ever read. Therefore, it took me a little time of adaptation to conceive how I had to read it in order to unravel each poem.
ReplyDeleteI found Auden’s poetry full of his historical context; which is really interesting given the period. I also enjoyed seeing his poems’ evolution through time. That was a real pleasure for a first reading of English poetry collection despite that I had often to stop my reading in order to look for some words in the dictionary.
Elodie
W.H Auden's poetry gave me a hard time. However, I'm sujugated by the straightforwardness and brutality in the poetry, being a little bit similar to dystopia. Seldom I found bubbly, funny or sugar coated description in his work, he states and describes life as he lived it : harsh. His work seems to be a constant reminder of the miserable condition of society. What's more, although he doesn't directly call upon citizens to riot, his words have the enability to rattle one's mind. The evocative words in his masterpieces bounces like contradiction to the restriction implemented by the diverse totalitarian regimes of his time. As far as the form's concerned, his will to show the "reality", "what we do not like" to see, goes as far as to use different types of meters, rhymes and even stripping his poetry of any rules so that the reader will be totaly focused on the theme.
ReplyDeleteMacha
The first day I picked up W.H Auden’s book and I began reading the first poem I was completely baffled. I noticed on the first his distinct and intricate style of writing which took me a while to fully comprehend. What struck me most was no doubt his constant evolution from being very vague and using a lot of profound imagery to being very candid to the point of obviousness, that took me aback and I found it very impressive.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite poem is undoubtedly “O tell me the truth about love” because amid all the sorrowful, convoluted poems about war this one manages to be brief with a touch of humor. He also talked about love in a unique way.
Nicholas
I had at first some difficulties to understand W. H. Auden’s poetry; I was mainly impeded by the sometimes unclear syntax but, as I read through different poems and got used to Auden’s dynamic and straightforward style, I began to appreciate his evocative imagery and often self-inspired stories. The most meaningful poems to me, are those dealing with nature, love or grief, while I found less interest in the History or Literature related ones, perhaps because of the numerous references I did not understand and the author’s more distant approach. The poems I liked the most are “Look, stranger, at this island now”, because Auden addresses directly the reader and makes us discover a both calm and violent image of the sea, as well as “Funeral Blues”, which I found surprising by mingling an energetic rhythm with the themes of grief and mourning. Auden’s poetry is surprising: forthright, albeit subtle.
ReplyDeleteElsa
It took me time to adjust to Auden's poetry; I didn't understand a lot of words and he uses long sentences. However, more I read, more I liked it. I definitely loved his way of employing so many different forms and lengths: some are really short, others have long stanzas. It was so lively, we couldn't get bored. I also appreciate that his poetry is about many subjects, even though we recognize recurrent themes. I was less moved by his poems about war and society which were dark (but according to his time we can understand). I enjoyed much more his Nature and Love's ones. Nevertheless, my favorite poems were those composed of smaller ones like "In Time of War", "The Quest" and "Bucolics". I especially appreciated them because they relate stories and we can see some evolution in the characters. Otherwise, Auden doesn't use a lot of references, it is then easier for us to understand his meaning.
ReplyDeleteFlavie
To be completely honest, I opened the book expecting certain themes and a writing style that i had assumed would be prevalent after having formerly heard his poem 'Funeral Blues' that I, frankly, did not like that much.
ReplyDeleteHowever, after reading a few other ones, I was immediatly amazed by the diversity of the themes, structures and styles of the poems. Auden manages to touch on everything: prose and verse, war and love, nature and death, six-verses-long epitaphs and forty-two-pages-long commentary on a Shakespeare play, complex poems full of mysterious metaphors and others extremely straight-forward anc clear, all of this while still managing to have a style of his own, not having his works sound like they were all written by a different author.
This diversity ensures that everyone will find something to love and something to hate in this selection, and I strongly believe that it would be extremely difficult to find one poem to introduce and sum up Auden's work.
Maëlle
What really struck me with Auden’s poetry is its modernity.
ReplyDeleteFor some poems, I got through the end appreciating the rhythm, enjoying how the different sonorities were balanced and somehow, evoked emotions. However, if somebody would have asked what it was about, I’d stay stuck, even if I searched for all the words I couldn’t understand. Words, separate from each other were comprehensible, when they were put together in a stanza, nothing came out of it.
But as an overall, I felt that his poetry was much more down-to-earth than everything I’ve studied or read so far in english. The themes as well are very varied, none of the poems are exalting the unstoppable power of love or nature’s beauty as would be expected reading poetry. It seems that his poetry is reflecting the reaction inspired by his surroundings, his daily life, his readings…etc. It seems real. His writing is measured. Indeed unlike the romantic poetry, I didn’t find any grandiloquent imageries. The poetry is more “conventional” than the French Surrealists’ regarding the style but concerning the themes, I sometimes found some parallels for the everyday poetry, with nothing pompous. I guess a lightening textual analysis could cope with the references’ problems and clear the dissimulated meaning of some poems, offering the real interest of Auden’s poetry.
Poems I’ve read before, either in English or French, are very different from Auden’s.
ReplyDeleteOne of the reasons for that is that his poems offer a great diversity in form, something appreciable for the reader who experiences each time a new discovery. Indeed, Auden constantly plays with the ever-changing number of stanzas and lines it contains, the presence of rhymes and pattern of meter (or not) and sometimes the use of prose in order to create different atmospheres and convey various emotions.
Besides, Auden distinguishes himself by his down-to-earth approach to poetry which is as unusual as it is surprising. One striking example of this is his poem “Funeral Blues” in which he attaches importance to concrete elements of our daily lives in order to share his very realistic vision of death. His preference for simple words which will produce a much stronger impact on his reader is a characteristic I particularly loved.
Finally, Auden’s sensibility and remarkable lucidity regarding events of his time is praiseworthy.
I was at first a bit confused by Auden's peotry, particularly the syntax, I sometimes had to read a stanza three times to understand it. Understranding some of the poems as a whole was also a struggle : it was rather like a puzzle, I had all the separate pieces but I failed to put them together, like I was missing a reference, a hint, to form the final picture. I enjoyed reading those like I enjoy reading T.S Eliot, apreciating the way words flowed from one poem to another, what would first spring into my mind when I read a sentence, reading it like a foreign langage. I’m quite fond of poetry, from the short, free verse poems of Bukowski to the long ballads of Keats, and I tend to chose my favourites on their style, on what feelings they convey through their words. Reading Auden was a bit like that, some of the poems really made me feel something, even if I could not quite grasp the general sense of them. I also admired his diversity, how he could go from very long, almost narrative, poems to short, rapid ones and explore such different themes through them amazed me. My favourites were “O who can ever gaze his fill” ; Lay your sleeping head, my love ; and Will you turn a deaf ear, all illustrating this same diversity of subject and style.
ReplyDeleteIn short I got the whole spiritual connection-mystical part, I now need a more thorough insight and some deep analytical skills (alas I always do).
When I began to read W. H. Auden's Selected Poems I opened the book at a random page. My enthiousiasm went down when I realised I could barely understand anything... I went back to the first page and finally got used to Auden's way of writing. The variety of forms and themes he uses impressed me. The first half of the 20th Century was physically and mentally hard and eventhough I could not understand every detail either because of the writing scheme or my cultural knowledge being not expanded enough, I could feel the atmosphere of his poems. Plus, Auden doesn't try to escape from the surrounding world and gives us a striking description of reality. My favorite poems are "Funeral Blues" and "Epitaph on a Tyrant". The second poem might be short but describes perfectly how a tyrant thinks and what are the consequences, and also tells us how well Auden knows mankind.
ReplyDeleteTo put it in a nutshell, Auden's poems might be difficult to enjoy at the beginning, but when understood they give us a daunting image of the real world of the 20th century without taboo.
Valentine Raimbault.
Because it is the first element you notice when looking at any type of written work, what struck me most when I first leafed through the pages of the book was the very varied and different forms the texts could take. Indeed, some of the poems are several pages long, whereas others are just a few lines. It is interesting to notice that Auden did not choose a definite and unique form (verse, prose) for his work. What also surprised me was the fact that most of the time there was no title to the poems. I was sometimes (often!) confused by the grammatical structure of the verses which made it somewhat difficult to understand the poems. However I realized that it was not always necessary to understand the literal meaning of the words to appreciate the poem itself. I also felt that the themes explored by Auden in his poetry were varied (i.e.: love, war, freedom) but yet connected to one another because they represent most of the aspects of Human experience.
ReplyDeleteThe chronological way the collection is organized also serves to show the evolution of Auden’s poetry, displaying almost 50 years of work, which I found really impressive.
Zoe Ferdjani
When I read the first poems of Auden's Selected Poems, I must admit that they made little impression on me, because I couldn't find their general meaning. However, when I read the later poems, which were easier to understand, I found them noteworthy. I really loved the sincerity Auden shows in his poetry, whether he writes about the world he lives in or the personal feelings he experienced in his life. Concerning the style, I was impressed by the purity of his poetry, both in rhythm and language, whch allows him to convey his ideas and emotions efficiently.
ReplyDeleteLucie
Auden has astonished me with the extremely profund knowledge of the human kind reflected in the poems.The language, imagery and form used are polished, mastered,and always relevant and coherant with the themes and various atmospheres conveyed in order to create meaning. Some poems are the expression of a wise soul dominated by reason, always willing to take a step back and approach life and events as justly as it can be done, while others appeal to me as the laying bare, the praise of the unique individual's ability to feel, the variety of human thoughts and emotions, the power of passion.
ReplyDeleteMoreover Auden takes perticular care to incarnate his generation as obectively and as deeply as it can be done, neither embelishing the past nor idealizing the future, and to me that is where his modernity comes from.
Charline
After reading several poems by Auden, I noticed the purity of his words, emotions and thoughts. Indeed, he approaches serious themes with a disconcerting lightness. A striking example of that is Miss Gee which talks about a girl that feels alone and ends up hanged and dissected by students. It was definitely my favorite one and the one that touched me the most.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I found the poems hard to understand because of the rich vocabulary and various imageries. Also, I had to take a certain time to think about them to fully appreciate them; it’s not the kind of book that you read cover to cover.
Manon
To my mind, Auden’s poems required a certain maturity and knowledge. What I want to say is that I’m not one of those who can feel and approach this kind of poetry effortlessly. Though several poems were quite clear, others seemed to me somewhat distant. Presently I still cannot construe the meaning of some. Nonetheless for those who were affordable I retain a certain straightforward style, strewn with little touches of lightness to much deeper. One that illustrates this point would be Calypso. He ended up it by admitting that “love’s more important and powerful than even a priest or a politician”. I admire the way he compares a strong feeling into fields that should not (normally) be linked with. Furthermore we can at ease understand his opinion regarding these. I like it.
ReplyDeleteLastly, to go back to what I was saying about the difficulties I met while reading his selected poems, I can’t wait to learn more about him and his works, in order to know who was this man and what he wanted to say.
Poetry is an art that always seems (in my opinion) complicated to comprehend because of its abstruse words and its profound and recondite meanings. Here in Auden's poetry, I was gladly surprised and attracted by his simple style of writing with clear and unambiguous words and themes. The collection of selected poems was a bit too long for me to read cover to cover in one hit, so I just opened the book, flicked through the pages and read (lets be honest) any short work of poetry I could find. Every time, I was astounded to land on Love or Nature poems full of emotion, strong imagery and sensorial descriptions. Sometimes, I also discovered gloomy and sorrowful but very moving poems about war, not surprising as this theme personally concerned the author, since he lived during both World Wars.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about poetry and studying it at school, I associate it with a certain form of hardship. I become aware of the impediment of being French more than ever. This feeling followed me along the pages of Auden’s work as I’m still having quite a hard time getting the meaning of most of the poems. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading them and found myself lingering on some passages every now and then, appreciating a particular arrangement of words, a rhythm or the sound of a verse in my head. Keeping in mind the fact that there would be some deeper studying of these poems, I read with a pinch of excitement knowing that it would become even more interesting during the school year.
ReplyDeleteLéa
Though hard to understand due to the vocabulary used, but also to the structure of the verses themself, W.H Auden's poetry successfully achieves to create different interesting atmospheres through the impact of the words he carefully chooses to use. It goes from eerie, oppressing poems such as "Dover" to poems in which he expresses his love like in the one called "Calypso". An other characteristic that I found while reading Auden's poems was the fact that he associates a poetic sensibility with the quality of a storyteller. Indeed, a lot of his poems are actually written like parts of a novel (except for the form, obviously), telling a story or describing a situation/place/person, while keeping the writing beautiful and poetic.
ReplyDeleteIn short, i enjoyed reading his poems mostly because of the atmosphere and feelings they carried, even though I had a hard time understanding some of them.
Gaspard
Before reading Auden's poems, I was afraid to feel uncomfortable with this unknown time period and type of poetry in which I was cast. But after decrypting the first poems, I realized how interersting was the way the poet involved the beauty of the word and the thoughts behind them (with a precise message). I want to explore the links between those topics and the time period they were written, because I am still trying to figure out how the chronology, between the first poem in August 1927 and the last one in August 1973, affects Auden's writing (its evolution).
ReplyDeleteMy favorite poem, and I can't explain why, is “O Tell Me the Truth About Love”, which seem a bit absurd at first. But my choice will certainly change after re-reading and re-exploring more deeply all of them.
Antoine De Bonis
One would agree on the fact that the harshness to understand the meaning of Auden's poetry is primarily due to his wide range of vocabulary. Nonetheless, by a profusion of details such as the feet he chooses and the rhymes he elaborates, another language is distiled. Auden gives birth to a language solely musical emulating the fluidity of water. As an example, the message poem V "Watch any day his nonchalant pauses,see" intends to transmit, is still, after many readings, very obscure to me but the beauty resides in the way the words seem to respond to one another.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, poetry always seemed to appear to me as a foreign language. After reading W.H Auden's first poem, I frankly knew this poet wouldn't be the one reconciling me with this kind of literature. Yet, I was surprise to realize how some of these poems appealed to me, in a way I couldn't even describe. Auden's poetry clearly demonstrates his mastery of the use of words and the power he gives them, with which he conveys gripping atmosperes.
ReplyDeleteI even happened to like the fact I didn't get all his poetry after a first reading; having to look up words, trying to surmise what Auden tried to convey appeared to be quite gripping.
One of my favorite poems would be "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone..." because I was struck by all the different themes within one poem, all the varied words and ideas I would have never thought to assemble.
Milla Martin Price