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W. h. auden


            Wystan Hugh Auden was one of the greatest English poets of his time. This is partly because he believes and identifies with what he wrote. He wrote in the preface to The Collected Shorter Poems of W. H. Auden:.
             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 unaware 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.
             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.


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