One poet, his poem, New York City, and a world on the verge of change.
W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality, became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left. And his poem, "September 1, 1939," was 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.
These are the contributing forces underlying Ian Sansom's work excavating the man and his most celebrated piece of literature. But Sansom's book is also about New York City: 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 so it is also 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.
More than a work of literary criticism or literary biography, this is a record of why and how we create and respond to great poetry.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Ian Sansom is the author of 10 books of fiction and non-fiction. He is a former Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and a former Writer-in-Residence at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry in Belfast. He is currently a Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3 and he writes for The Guardian and The London Review of Books.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
£ 3.19
Within U.S.A.
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0062984594
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Buy for Great customer experience. Seller Inventory # GoldenDragon0062984594
Book Description Condition: New. . Seller Inventory # 52GZZZ00C7R5_ns
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0062984594
Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0062984594
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Brand New. 320 pages. 9.00x6.00x1.05 inches. In Stock. Seller Inventory # 0062984594
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0062984594