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The Sea and the Mirror

The Sea and the Mirror PDF Author: W. H. Auden
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691123845
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
Written in the midst of World War II after its author emigrated to America, "The Sea and the Mirror" is not merely a great poem but ranks as one of the most profound interpretations of Shakespeare's final play in the twentieth century. As W. H. Auden told friends, it is "really about the Christian conception of art" and it is "my Ars Poetica, in the same way I believe The Tempest to be Shakespeare's." This is the first critical edition. Arthur Kirsch's introduction and notes make the poem newly accessible to readers of Auden, readers of Shakespeare, and all those interested in the relation of life and literature--those two classic themes alluded to in its title. The poem begins in a theater after a performance of The Tempest has ended. It includes a moving speech in verse by Prospero bidding farewell to Ariel, a section in which the supporting characters speak in a dazzling variety of verse forms about their experiences on the island, and an extravagantly inventive section in prose that sees the uncivilized Caliban address the audience on art--an unalloyed example of what Auden's friend Oliver Sachs has called his "wild, extraordinary and demonic imagination." Besides annotating Auden's allusions and sources (in notes after the text), Kirsch provides extensive quotations from his manuscript drafts, permitting the reader to follow the poem's genesis in Auden's imagination. This book, which incorporates for the first time previously ignored corrections that Auden made on the galleys of the first edition, also provides an unusual opportunity to see the effect of one literary genius upon another.

The Sea and the Mirror

The Sea and the Mirror PDF Author: W. H. Auden
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691123845
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
Written in the midst of World War II after its author emigrated to America, "The Sea and the Mirror" is not merely a great poem but ranks as one of the most profound interpretations of Shakespeare's final play in the twentieth century. As W. H. Auden told friends, it is "really about the Christian conception of art" and it is "my Ars Poetica, in the same way I believe The Tempest to be Shakespeare's." This is the first critical edition. Arthur Kirsch's introduction and notes make the poem newly accessible to readers of Auden, readers of Shakespeare, and all those interested in the relation of life and literature--those two classic themes alluded to in its title. The poem begins in a theater after a performance of The Tempest has ended. It includes a moving speech in verse by Prospero bidding farewell to Ariel, a section in which the supporting characters speak in a dazzling variety of verse forms about their experiences on the island, and an extravagantly inventive section in prose that sees the uncivilized Caliban address the audience on art--an unalloyed example of what Auden's friend Oliver Sachs has called his "wild, extraordinary and demonic imagination." Besides annotating Auden's allusions and sources (in notes after the text), Kirsch provides extensive quotations from his manuscript drafts, permitting the reader to follow the poem's genesis in Auden's imagination. This book, which incorporates for the first time previously ignored corrections that Auden made on the galleys of the first edition, also provides an unusual opportunity to see the effect of one literary genius upon another.

The Shield of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles PDF Author: W. H. Auden
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691256586
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Book Description
Back in print for the first time in decades, Auden’s National Book Award–winning poetry collection, in a critical edition that introduces it to a new generation of readers The Shield of Achilles, which won the National Book Award in 1956, may well be W. H. Auden’s most important, intricately designed, and unified book of poetry. In addition to its famous title poem, which reimagines Achilles’s shield for the modern age, when war and heroism have changed beyond recognition, the book also includes two sequences—“Bucolics” and “Horae Canonicae”—that Auden believed to be among his most significant work. Featuring an authoritative text and an introduction and notes by Alan Jacobs, this volume brings Auden’s collection back into print for the first time in decades and offers the only critical edition of the work. As Jacobs writes in the introduction, Auden’s collection “is the boldest and most intellectually assured work of his career, an achievement that has not been sufficiently acknowledged.” Describing the book’s formal qualities and careful structure, Jacobs shows why The Shield of Achilles should be seen as one of Auden’s most central poetic statements—a richly imaginative, beautifully envisioned account of what it means to live, as human beings do, simultaneously in nature and in history.

For the Time Being

For the Time Being PDF Author: W. H. Auden
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691158274
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
The first critical edition of Auden's only explicitly religious long poem For the Time Being is a pivotal book in the career of one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. W. H. Auden had recently moved to America, fallen in love with a young man to whom he considered himself married, rethought his entire poetic and intellectual equipment, and reclaimed the Christian faith of his childhood. Then, in short order, his relationship fell apart and his mother, to whom he was very close, died. In the midst of this period of personal crisis and intellectual remaking, he decided to write a poem about Christmas and to have it set to music by his friend Benjamin Britten. Applying for a Guggenheim grant, Auden explained that he understood the difficulty of writing something vivid and distinctive about that most clichéd of subjects, but welcomed the challenge. In the end, the poem proved too long and complex to be set by Britten, but in it we have a remarkably ambitious and poetically rich attempt to see Christmas in double focus: as a moment in the history of the Roman Empire and of Judaism, and as an ever-new and always contemporary event for the believer. For the Time Being is Auden's only explicitly religious long poem, a technical tour de force, and a revelatory window into the poet's personal and intellectual development. This edition provides the most accurate text of the poem, a detailed introduction by Alan Jacobs that explains its themes and sets the poem in its proper contexts, and thorough annotations of its references and allusions.

What W. H. Auden Can Do for You

What W. H. Auden Can Do for You PDF Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691144737
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
Bestselling novelist Alexander McCall Smith's charming account of how the poet W. H. Auden has helped guide his life—and how he might guide yours, too When facing a moral dilemma, Isabel Dalhousie—Edinburgh philosopher, amateur detective, and title character of a series of novels by best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith—often refers to the great twentieth-century poet W. H. Auden. This is no accident: McCall Smith has long been fascinated by Auden. Indeed, the novelist, best known for his No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, calls the poet not only the greatest literary discovery of his life but also the best of guides on how to live. In this book, McCall Smith has written a charming personal account about what Auden has done for him—and what he just might do for you. Part self-portrait, part literary appreciation, the book tells how McCall Smith first came across the poet's work in the 1970s, while teaching law in Belfast, a violently divided city where Auden's "September 1, 1939," a poem about the outbreak of World War II, strongly resonated. McCall Smith goes on to reveal how his life has related to and been inspired by other Auden poems ever since. For example, he describes how he has found an invaluable reflection on life's transience in "As I Walked Out One Evening," while "The More Loving One" has provided an instructive meditation on unrequited love. McCall Smith shows how Auden can speak to us throughout life, suggesting how, despite difficulties and change, we can celebrate understanding, acceptance, and love for others. An enchanting story about how art can help us live, this book will appeal to McCall Smith's fans and anyone curious about Auden.

Why Argument Matters

Why Argument Matters PDF Author: Lee Siegel
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300264968
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
An impassioned case for argument’s central role in human life, by one of America’s most distinguished cultural critics “Perhaps more than any other commentary, Why Argument Matters illuminates the root causes of our partisan, venomous, irrational times—and yet somehow rescues from the morass the true nature of argument, its power and beauty.”—Michael Wolff, author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House From Eve’s crafty exchange with the serpent, to Martin Luther King’s soaring, subtle ultimatums, to the throes of Twitter—argument’s drainpipe—the human desire to prevail with words has been not just a moral but an existential compulsion. In this dazzling reformulation of argument, renowned critic Lee Siegel portrays the true art of argument as much deeper and far more embracing than mere quarrel, dispute, or debate. It is the supreme expression of humanity’s longing for a better life, born of empathy and of care for the world and those who inhabit it. With wit, passion, and striking insights, Siegel plumbs the emotional and psychological sources of clashing words, weaving through his exploration the untold story of the role argument has played in societies throughout history. Each life, he maintains, is an argument for that particular way of living; every individual style of argument is also a case that is being made for that person’s right to argue. Argument is at the heart of the human experience, and language, at its most liberated and expressive, inexorably bends toward argument.

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I Walked Out One Evening PDF Author: W. H. Auden
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679761705
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
W. H. Auden once defined light verse as the kind that is written by poets who are democratically in tune with their audience and whose language is straightforward and close to general speech. Given that definition, the 123 poems in this collection all qualify; they are as accessible as popular songs yet have the wisdom and profundity of the greatest poetry. As I Walked Out One Evening contains some of Auden's most memorable verse: "Now Through the Night's Caressing Grip," "Lullaby: Lay your Sleeping Head, My Love," "Under Which Lyre," and "Funeral Blues." Alongside them are less familiar poems, including seventeen that have never before appeared in book form. Here, among toasts, ballads, limericks, and even a foxtrot, are "Song: The Chimney Sweepers," a jaunty evocation of love, and the hilarious satire "Letter to Lord Byron." By turns lyrical, tender, sardonic, courtly, and risqué, As I Walked Out One Evening is Auden at his most irresistible and affecting.

A Gravestone Made of Wheat

A Gravestone Made of Wheat PDF Author: Will Weaver
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society
ISBN: 0873518802
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 24

Book Description
The feature film Sweet Land was based on this short story about a Norwegian American farmer and his German immigrant common-law bride. Excerpted from Sweet Land: New and Selected Stories.

Sublimation Point

Sublimation Point PDF Author: Jason Schneiderman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 90

Book Description
"...[T]he tradition this young poet most significantly keeps alive in them is the great poetic tradition of wit as serious means. In such writing, wit -- as the old expression has it -- cuts to the quick." (Robert Pinsky for The Washington Post) "Sublimation Point is like a perfect pop song, making the listener glad to be alive. Jason Schneiderman doesn't strive for complication: he wins us over with rueful plain-speaking. He has Anne Sexton's directness, Max Jacob's eye for incongruity. Tragedy enters the picture, and becomes the frame: nowhere do these poems forget their nemesis, mortality." (Wayne Koestenbaum) "Grave, sweetly questioning, often irreverently funny, Jason Schneiderman's poems about love and death, the Holocaust and family history, self knowledge and self deception give this book a range and tonal variety that is extremely rare for any poet, let alone a first book: Schneiderman has imagined his work broadly, and executed it with great skill, passion, and intelligence." (Tom Sleigh)

The Best American Poetry 2021

The Best American Poetry 2021 PDF Author: David Lehman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982106646
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
The 2021 edition of the leading collection of contemporary American poetry is guest edited by the former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, providing renewed proof that this is “a ‘best’ anthology that really lives up to its title” (Chicago Tribune). Since 1988, The Best American Poetry series has been “one of the mainstays of the poetry publication world” (Academy of American Poets). Each volume presents a choice of the year’s most memorable poems, with comments from the poets themselves lending insight into their work. The guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2021 is Tracy K. Smith, the former United States Poet Laureate, whose own poems are, Toi Derricotte’s words, “beautiful and serene” in their surfaces with an underlying “sense of an unknown vastness.” In The Best American Poetry 2021, Smith has selected a distinguished array of works both vast and beautiful by such important voices as Henri Cole, Billy Collins, Louise Erdrich, Nobel laureate Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, and Kevin Young.

Striking Surface

Striking Surface PDF Author: Jason Schneiderman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780912592701
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Poetry. "Jason Schneiderman has a fabulous, distillate gift for seeing to the heart of inherited paradigms: the Greeks on violence and the gods; the Christian Middle Ages on violence and conquest; the all-too-transhistorical, multicultural Everywhere on violence toward children. Hence the ravishing paradox of Schneiderman's poems, which find their freshest purchase in twice-told tales: the myths of Hyacinth and Echo, the myth of the progressive totalitarian state, the skepticism of the Rabbis, the nostalgia of the skeptical philosophers. STRIKING SURFACE (six of them on the hand alone, says the latest Interrogation Manual) is both beautifully conceived and beautifully written: witty, trenchant, tender, acerbic, and always, immutably, wise"--Linda Gregerson.