Today marks the 109th anniversary of Wystan Hugh’s birth. I managed to find a link to an early poem Auden wrote for his friend Christopher Isherwood’s birthday here [pdf, p. 7]:
TO A WRITER ON HIS BIRTHDAY
August for the people and their favourite islands. Daily the steamers sidle up to meet The effusive welcome of the pier…
And here’s an interview Aidan Wasley (author of THE AGE OF AUDEN: Postwar Poetry and the American Scene) conducted with John Ashbery:
John Ashbery: I first met [Auden] when he gave a reading at Harvard, I think in the spring of ’47, perhaps … He said he preferred America, though he preferred the English countryside because it was much tidier looking… I was always a bit intimidated by him, as I think many people were.
Filed under: anniversary, Auden, poetry
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 