W. H. Auden's Book of Light Verse

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New York Review of Books, Jul 31, 2004 - Poetry - 608 pages
Auden's celebrated anthology of light verse is packed with surprising finds while also offering a striking rethinking of the poetic canon. Commissioned by Oxford University Press in the 1930s, when Auden's own work was at its boldest, the book caught its original publisher off guard. For it is less a collection of humorous verses than a celebration of the popular voice in English, in which the work of great satirists like Swift and Byron keeps company with ballads, chanteys, ditties, nursery rhymes, street calls, bathroom graffiti, epitaphs, folk songs, vaudeville turns, limericks, and blues. Turning away from the post-Romantic cult of the sentimental lyric, Auden features poetry that is clear, enjoyable, and, no matter its age, absolutely modern.

This new edition includes previously censored poems, together with Auden's remarkable introduction and a new preface by his literary executor, Edward Mendelson.

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Selected pages

Contents

Section 1
51
Section 2
52
Section 3
80
Section 4
82
Section 5
83
Section 6
87
Section 7
103
Section 8
110
Section 17
202
Section 18
205
Section 19
207
Section 20
211
Section 21
212
Section 22
235
Section 23
248
Section 24
258

Section 9
112
Section 10
123
Section 11
142
Section 12
156
Section 13
184
Section 14
186
Section 15
190
Section 16
193
Section 25
259
Section 26
265
Section 27
270
Section 28
279
Section 29
280
Section 30
282
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About the author (2004)

W.H. Auden (1907–1973) was an English poet, playwright, and essayist who lived and worked in the United States for much of the second half of his life. His work, from his early strictly metered verse, and plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood, to his later dense poems and penetrating essays, represents one of the major achievements of twentieth-century literature.

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