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September 1, 1939: W. H. Auden and the Afterlife of a Poem

By (author) Ian Sansom

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normal price: R 280.95

Price: R 252.95

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| book description |

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 â€“ 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 â€“ â€˜September 1, 1939â€™, his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed â€“ or been condemned â€“ to a tragic and unexpected afterlife. About a city â€“ 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 â€“ about 1939, and about our own Age of Anxiety, about the aftermath of September 11, when many American newspapers reprinted Audenâ€™s poem in its entirety on their editorial pages.