Selected Poems of W. H. Auden: (Vintage International)

This significantly expanded edition of W. H. Auden's Selected Poems adds twenty poems to the hundred in the original edition, broadening its focus to better reflect the enormous wealth of form, rhetoric, tone, and content in Auden's work. Newly included are such favorites as "Funeral Blues" and other works that represent Auden's lighter, comic side, giving a fuller picture of the range of his genius. Also new are brief notes explaining references that may have become obscure to younger generations of readers and a revised introduction that draws on recent additions to knowledge about Auden. As in the original edition, the new Selected Poems makes available the preferred original versions of some thirty poems that Auden revised later in life, making it the best source for enjoying the many facets of Auden's art in one volume.

Table of Contents:
Note to the Expanded Edition xiii Introduction xv 1. Who stands, the crux left of the watershed 2. From the very first coming down 3. Control of the passes was, he saw, the key 4. Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings 5. Watch any day his nonchalant pauses, see 6. Will you turn a deaf ear 7. Sir, no man’s enemy, forgiving all 8. It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens 9. Since you are going to begin to-day 10. Consider this and in our time 11. This lunar beauty 12. To ask the hard question is simple 13. Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle 14. What’s in your mind, my dove, my coney 15. “O where are you going?” said reader to rider 16. Though aware of our rank and alert to obey orders 17. O Love, the interest itself in thoughtless Heaven 18. O what is that sound which so thrills the ear 19. Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys 20. Out on the lawn I lie in bed 21. A shilling life will give you all the facts 22. Our hunting fathers told the story 23. Easily, my dear, you move, easily your head 24. The Summer holds: upon its glittering lake 25. Now through night’s caressing grip 26. O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges 27. Look, stranger, at this island now 28. Now the leaves are falling fast 29. Underneath the abject willow 30. Dear, though the night is gone 31. Fish in the unruffled lakes 32. Casino 33. Funeral Blues 34. Journey to Iceland 35. “O who can ever gaze his fill” 36. Lay your sleeping head, my love 37. Spain 38. Johnny 39. Orpheus 40. Miss Gee 41. Wrapped in a yielding air, beside 42. Dover 43. As I walked out one evening 44. Oxford 45. O Tell Me the Truth About Love 46. In Time of War 47. The Capital 48. Museé des Beaux Arts 49. Epitaph on a Tyrant 50. In Memory of W. B. Yeats 51. Refugee Blues 52. The Unknown Citizen 53. Calypso 54. September 1, 1939 55. Law, say the gardeners, is the sun 56. In Memory of Sigmund Freud 57. Eyes look into the well 58. Lady, weeping at the crossroads 59. Song for St. Cecilia’s Day 60. The Quest 61. But I Can’t 62. In Sickness and in Health 63. Leap Before You Look 64. Jumbled in the common box 65. Atlantis 66. At the Grave of Henry James 67. Mundus et Infans 68. The Lesson 69. The Sea and the Mirror 70. Noon 71. Lament for a Lawgiver 72. Under Which Lyre 73. The Fall of Rome 74. In Praise of Limestone 75. A Household 76. Song 77. A Walk After Dark 78. Memorial for the City 79. Under Sirius 80. Their Lonely Betters 81. Nocturne I 82. Fleet Visit 83. The Shield of Achilles 84. The Willow-Wren and the Stare 85. Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier 86. Nocturne II 87. Bucolics 88. Horae Canonicae 89. Homage to Clio 90. The Old Man’s Road 91. The Song 92. First Things First 93. The More Loving One 94. Friday’s Child 95. Good-bye to the Mezzogiorno 96. Dame Kind 97. You 98. A Change of Air 99. After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics 100. On the Circuit 101. Et in Arcadia Ego 102. Thanksgiving for a Habitat 103. Epithalamium 104. Amor Loci 105. Profile 106. Fairground 107. River Profile 108. Prologue at Sixty 109. Forty Years On 110. Ode to Terminus 111. August 1968 112. A New Year Greeting 113. Moon Landing 114. Old People’s Home 115. Talking to Myself 116. A Shock 117. A Lullaby 118. Aubade 119. A Thanksgiving 120. Archaeology 3 A Note on the Text Explanatory Notes Index of Titles and First Lines

About the Author :
W. H. Auden (1907-73) was born in York, England, and educated at Oxford. During the 1930s he was the leader of a left-wing literary group that included Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender. With Isherwood he wrote three verse plays. He lived in Germany during the early days of Nazism, and was a stretcher-bearer for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Auden's first volume of poetry appeared in 1930. Later volumes include Spain (1937), New Year Letter (1941), For the Time Being, a Christmas Oratorio (1945), The Age of Anxiety (1947; Pulitzer Prize), Nones (1951), The Shield of Achilles (1955), Homage to Clio (1960), About the House (1965), Epistle of a Godson (1972), and Thank You, Fog (1974). His other works include the libretto, with his companion Chester Kallman, for Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress (1953); A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970); and The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1968). In 1939 Auden moved to the United States and became a citizen in 1946, and beginning that year taught at a number of American colleges and universities. From 1956 to 1961 he was professor of poetry at Oxford. Subsequently he lived in a number of countries, including Italy and Austria, and in 1971 he returned to England. He was awarded the National Medal for Literature in 1967.