The English-born American poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was one of the preeminent poets of the twentieth century. His works center on moral issues and evidence strong political, social, and psychological orientations. In the 1930s W. H. Auden became...

W. H. Auden was a major English poet, probably the most important English-speaking poet born in the twentieth century. Noted especially for native lyrical gifts and highly developed technical expertise, he also displayed wide reading and acute...

W.H. Auden was a major English poet, probably the most important English-speaking poet born in the twentieth century. Noted especially for native lyrical gifts and highly developed technical expertise, he also displayed wide reading and acute...

THE most serious of 20th-century poets, W.H. Auden was also the most frivolous. He questioned the value of poetry throughout his life-could it really make things happen? Did it contribute to the good of mankind?-and in the end decided that art of all...

In Memory of W. H. Auden (DIED SEPTEMBER 1973) I What matters is not possessing only a threadbare coat, a single pair of run-over shoes when it snows and that the cold wind btusters nor that the pipes in your room are as rotten...

Today is Ash Wednesday, Feb. 21, the 52nd day of 2007. There are 313 days left in the year.Today's Highlight in History:On Feb. 21, 1965, former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death in New York by assassins identified as Black Muslims.On...

Nothing could be gloomier or more poignant than the extinction of Greenwich Village poets. But it’s been decades since W.H. Auden strolled the streets in his slippers here; now the late Pulitzer Prize–winner Stanley Kunitz’s apartment has been sold to a department-store executive. According to...

In the following essay, Deane explores Auden's theoretical assumptions, linguistic techniques, and open-ended relationship with the reader in "New Year Letter."

In the following essay, Jacobs examines Auden's communitarian sympathies and moral vision. According to Jacobs, "Auden understood both the costs and benefits of choosing to cultivate local knowledge and local attachments better than almost any political thinker writing about such issues today."

In the following essay, Hynes discusses Auden's emigration to the United States, his preoccupation with history and art, and "New Year Letter" as a reflection of Auden's historical sensibility.

In W. H. Auden's poem "If I Could Tell You," time is personified and introduced to the reader as an unreliable character, through through various poetical devices such as personification, repetition, and juxtaposed imagery. The speaker in the poem blames Time (with a capital "T") for unwanted changes in life, and he repeats the line because he observes that all changes, even those that are unintentional, come with Time.