Some poems which I wrote… I have thrown out because they were dishonest…or boring.

A dishonest poem is one which expresses… feelings or beliefs which its author never felt or entertained… one must be honest even about one’s prejudices.

This piece shows that all the poems that W. H. Auden wrote were related to his life or his beliefs in life.

W. H. Auden was born in York, England on February 21, 1907. He moved to Birmingham during his childhood and was educated at Christ’s Church, Oxford. As a child he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost. He went on to study at Oxford. However he was unsuccessful and only received a third-class degree in English. Auden went through many hard times and many happy times in his life. These times were recorded in his poems.

The first of these emotional occasions was his wedding, which he wrote about in his poem, “A Bride in the 30’s.” In 1935 Auden married Erika Mann, a journalist. Auden was una

Auden’s next stage in life was his, “Journey to Iceland.” This was brought on by a number of life altering decisions. One was his divorce from his first wife Mann. Another reason was his religious conversion to Anglo-Catholicism. A third reason was the original failure of his first collection of poems, which were rejected by numerous publishers. He expressed these reasons and others in “Journey to Iceland.” In this poem he clearly complains about the harshness of England and therefore gave his reasoning for choosing Iceland, he wrote, “Faintly, his limited hope, as he nears the glitter of glaciers.” This line shows that his move to Iceland in 1936 was a move of desperation looking for any sign that things in his life would turn around.

ware Mann was only marrying him to obtain a British passport. This poem started out in a happy mood telling of the wonderful aspects of marriage. After his wedding when he realized that he was being used, he ended the poem writing, “ Forfeit the beautiful interests and fall where the engaging face is the face of the betrayer.” This line showed his feelings of being betrayed by the woman whom he had just lent his heart to. Auden later moved to the United States where he met Chester Kallman and happily remarried.

Even though Auden was far away from the war it still affected his life and was the inspiration to many poems. His first war poem was September 1, 1939. That was the day that Germany invaded Poland starting the war. Auden does not describe the physical horrors of the war, but he writes about the mental toll that the war took on everyone’s mind. This poem recently brought upon itself new meaning in regards to another horrific September day. In his poem Auden wrote, “Into this neutral air where blind skyscrapers use their full height to proclaim the strength of Collective Man,…But who can live for long in an euphoric dream;” Many thought that this compared to the suddenness of the World Trade Center falling down. However he also wrote in the same poem, “The lights must never go out the music must always play…” People affected by September 11, 2001 felt that this is also true about their situation,

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