September 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem

September 1, 1939: A Biography of a Poem
Ian Sansom

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.

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Copyright (#u5f5ad856-0dad-5c02-bd43-a8127e0f707c)

4th Estate

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

Copyright © Ian Sansom 2019

Ian Sansom asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Unpublished writings by W. H. Auden are quoted with the permission of the Estate of W. H. Auden.

‘September 1, 1939’ from Another Time by W. H. Auden (1940, Faber & Faber).

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007557219

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780007557226

Version: 2019-08-02

Dedication (#u5f5ad856-0dad-5c02-bd43-a8127e0f707c)

For N. J. Humphrey

Contents

1  Cover (#u2ea0e44d-ff08-551b-9822-d9d5aaf221dd)

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Dedication

5  Contents (#u5f5ad856-0dad-5c02-bd43-a8127e0f707c)

6  Wow!

7  September 1, 1939

8 Your Least Favourite Auden Poem?

9  Just a Title

10  1

11  I ≠ A

12  The Modern Poet

13  Not Standing

14  A Not Insignificant Americanism

15  A Rolling Tomato Gathers No Mayonnaise

16  Clever-Clever

17  Various Cosmic Thingummys

18  Offensive Smells

19  2

20  A Little Spank-Spank

21  Strangeways

22  Is Berlin Very Wicked?

23  Do Not Tell Other Writers to F*** Off

24  3

25  The Latin for the Judgin’

26  4

27  Aerodynamics

28  Get Rid of the (Expletive) Braille