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September 1, 1939
- W. H. Auden and the Afterlife of a Poem
- Narrated by: Ian Sansom
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
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September 1, 1939
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Summary
This is a book about a poet, about a poem, about a city, and about a world at a point of change. More than a work of literary criticism or literary biography, it is a record of why and how we create and respond to great poetry.
This is a book about a poet – W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality who became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left.
About a poem – ‘September 1, 1939’, his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed – or been condemned – to a tragic and unexpected afterlife.
About a city – New York, an island, an emblem of the Future, magnificent, provisional, seamy, and in 1939 about to emerge as the defining twentieth-century cosmopolis, the capital of the world.
And about a world at a point of change – about 1939, and about our own Age of Anxiety, about the aftermath of September 11, when many American newspapers reprinted Auden’s poem in its entirety on their editorial pages.
Critic reviews
‘Sansom has given us a book in which all serious readers of Auden will find something to value. He has chosen exactly the right poem for our times to anchor his thoughts on this man who came to define a generation’ Literary Review
‘Richly entertaining … explores what goes on in the poem and why it has had such an impact. Shandyesque and magpie-like, scholarly yet frolicsome, the book makes room for all manner of diverse material, to great effect’ Blake Morrison, Guardian
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Olly Buxton
- 01-02-21
a special treat
This is an odd, delightful little book. It is loosely focused one of WH Auden’s more famous poems, in the same way that Ronnie Corbett's monologue was loosely focused around his joke, but comprised of any intriguing and entertaining diversions, digressions and asides. It really added to it having the author, clearly an unusual character with an unusual manner of speaking, and by no means the usual cut-glass stuffy Oxford academic, narrating. he is a polymath and Paul's in all kinds of history, context, comparisons comma metaphors and personal experiences to make a unique and very personal testament to a 25-year love-hate affair with this poem.
highly recommended.
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5 people found this helpful