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Preface
Auden is perhaps the most important English language poet of the twentieth century. He produced marvelous poems—even in his last days. But critics and reviewers not only have not recognized the aesthetics of the poetry Auden wrote after 1965; they have ignored or made prejudiced and disparaging remarks about it, thus diverting subsequent critical (and popular) attention from its remarkable virtues. The aim of W. H. Auden's Poetry: Mythos, Theory, and Practice is to clarify Auden's career-long interest in poetic theory and, above all, to show how his changing thoughts about poetry impelled him towards the production of the last three volumes of his verse. In his last years, Auden was anxious to share his concerns about poetry and its relation to culture. The things he said and wrote during these years are crucial to an understanding of Auden's canon as a whole. Those who undervalued the products of his last period effectively obscured significant portions of what he had accomplished earlier as well. Indeed, next to no sustained scholarly attention has been paid to a crucial aspect of Auden's fame: his virtuoso versification. W. H. Auden's Poetry: Mythos, Theory, and Practice maps