W. H. Auden, born in 1908 in York, is considered the greatest Anglo-American poet of the twentieth century. Encyclopedic in scope and technical achievement, his four hundred poems elucidate everything from pop cliche to profound meditation. September 1, 1939, written at the outbreak of World War II and widely circulated after September 11, 2001, is evidence of relevance that remains undiminished by time. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for The Age of Anxiety, Auden also composed hundreds of essays, lectures, and reviews, whose pervasive power gave him the status of respected elder statesman. He died in Vienna in 1973.

Photograph by Howard Coster. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0, © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Musée des Beaux Arts

by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;

People on couch
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