Selected Poems

For many of us,the poems that we read in childhood and adolescence are those that stick with us the most. When I was fifteen, I bought this volume and promptly fell in love with Auden's poetry. His work showed a restlessness with the social and political state of his world, and I found that I could connect with it both intellectually and emotionally. To this day, I can revisit this book's pages feeling like I am visiting a childhood friend. Auden expressed some feelings I shared with him, and I was moved by his ability to express them better than I ever could: with frankness, wit, and grace. A must for any literary enthusiast (or any curious fifteen-year-old, for that matter).

I can do little more than echo the other reviewers here. This is all a 'selected poems' shoud be: introductory and selective. Yes, "Funeral Blues" is missing. But no one can complain about what is here, which includes "In Time of War", the great sonnet sequence; "The Quest", another long sequence; and the entirety of THE SEA AND THE MIRROR, which is based on Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST. If you are, however, only interested in his love poems, I'd have to steer you toward TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE, a nice little chapbook containing only those.My own personal experience with this book may be relevant. It has served to introduce me to one of the finest poets of the last century and sparked a desire to read THE COLLECTED POEMS, also edited by Mendelson, to see how Auden re-wrote thirty of the brilliant poems here included. I'm continuing on my voyage; hope you are starting on yours.

The poetry is splendid -- Auden is a brilliant, sensitive, musical and entertaining writer -- and the selection is fairly representative. Mendelson prefers Auden's later poems to his earlier ones, so the twee middle-aged sequences "Bucolics" and "Horae Canonicae" are included complete, while most of "Twelve Songs" (which has some terrific love poems like "Fish in the unruffled lakes", "Funeral Blues" and "Tell me the truth about love") is not. Still, there is enough in here, esp. in the first two-thirds of the book, to give you a fair enough taste of Auden's verse to entice you to buy his Collected Poems.(You'll still need the Selected; it has a couple of good poems that Auden decided not to republish, and superior versions of some early poems.)

Auden is one of the great poets of the past century and one of the greatest ever in English. This is a particularly good collection of his work. The editor, Edward Mendelson, is a leading Auden scholar and Auden's literary executor. This volume contains all of Auden's major poetry including the great short lyrics, the major longer works, and my favorite, the great China sonnet sequence. In his later years, Auden altered the text of some famous earlier poems to change wordings he felt were false. In this edition, Mendelson uses the earlier versions of these subsequently altered verses. Many prefer the early versions though I find comparisons with the amended versions published in the equally wonderful Collected Poems, also edited by Mendelson, to be very interesting. I am not sure that the amended versions are worse, just different. It contains also a particularly insightful preface by Mendelson that does a very nice job of putting Auden into the context of 20th century English poetry. This is a wonderful book for those who love Auden's work. It can be read over and over again. It is also an excellent introduction for those encountering Auden for the first time.

W. H. Auden has always been one of my favourite modern poets, and the 'Selected Poems' one of my favourite volumes of his work. While he gained popular vogue for a time following Ben Elton's film 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (still one of the funniest films ever made), the full extent of Auden's ability is attested to in this volume, which includes some of his best loved and well recognised poems (and does not include 'Funeral Blues', the poem from 'Four Weddings' - if you're looking for that poem, try the short volume 'Tell Me the Truth About Love'). This selection by Edward Mendelson includes the original versions of poems edited by Auden later in his life, also giving a unique perspective on the early development of Auden's work.Poetry is, of course, a very personal taste, and one man's favourite poem is another's jumble of ill-chosen words. That being said, it is difficult, to my mind, to find poems written in this century which surpass 'Oxford', 'Musée des Beaux Arts', 'In Memory of W. B. Yeats', 'Et in Arcadia Ego'...the list is practically as long as the table of contents. No matter the subject (even to something as curious as 'In Praise of Limestone'), Auden has words for us, words which are as powerful, as moving now as they were the day they were put to paper.In short, if you are at all tempted by poetry, this volume is certainly worth your time.