#wh Auden

[theimpossiblecool]

“You owe it to all of us to get on with what you're good at.”

W.H. Auden

[nkp1981]

Tom Hiddleston Reads "Funeral Blues" By W.H. Auden

[balkanparamo]

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (detail) by Bruegel

[nikov]

if equal affection cannot be, LET THE MORE LOVING ONE BE ME.

tolkien (2019) / crush, richard siken / the holiday (2006) / the song of achilles, madeline miller / because i liked you, a.e. housman / the secret history, donna tartt / the more loving one, w. h. auden

[literaryvein-reblogs]

I wanna start writing poetry but i have no idea where to start or how to properly express my feelings

Don't chase after poetry. It lies dormant inside you. Like a shadow. It reveals itself at the right time. In the right light. At least, this was how it was for me. When I needed poetry—there it was.

But what do I know of poetry? Here are what some great poets have to say:

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” —W. H. Auden

Are you passionately in love with language?

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” —William Wordsworth

You say you have the feelings, but you have no idea how to properly express them yet. Try to get to that place of tranquility and recollect those emotions. Then perhaps poetry will flow out of you.

“Don't write love poems when you're in love. Write them when you're not in love.” —Richard Hugo

It's not impossible to write when you're in love. But it is difficult. And personally, I find that's when too many adverbs show up.

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” —Robert Frost

You already have those feelings. It seems you already have the beginnings of a poem.

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” —Emily Dickinson

I remember writing my first "poem," and asking myself, "Is this even a poem? Does it have enough rhymes, pretty imagery, are the metaphors intricate enough?" So after having written your poem, read it. If you feel physically as if the top of your head were taken off, you will know it is poetry.

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” —Oscar Wilde

And if you feel like you have written a "bad" poem, that just means your feelings were genuine. And when that happens—when you have become your own worst critic—I would say, you are now a poet.

To answer your question more technically, here are some posts I have on poetry: Poetic Genres A List of Poetic Terms

A few writing prompts that might inspire you: Lemons Untitled A Poetic Map No Words Word Lists

And here are some articles: How to Write Poetry Writing Your Own Poem Poetry: What is being said and how is it expressed?

If this (in any way) helps you write your poem, I would love to read it. If you don't mind :)

[cynassa]

Auden thinks 'Hamlet' as a play is a failure because you can't logic your way out of it, it doesn't make sense that Hamlet feels so betrayed by his mother, by Ophelia, and it doesn't make sense that he believes a ghost which could be his father's ghost or could be a spirit lying to him and it doesn't make sense that Hamlet can't decide whether to avenge his father or not and he sets up elaborate plans that might not come to fruition

And I'm just screaming softly into my hands like grief doesn't make sense and loss doesn't make sense and other people moving on when your whole life is broken apart and you won't have the future that was promised to you (a loving father a perfect mother the woman of your dreams the throne that's your birthright except it isn't anymore) doesn't make sense

[creativespark]

George Platt Lynes (American, 1907–1955), W.H. Auden, Hollywood, 1943

[lunarriviera]

"September 1, 1939"

I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism's face And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; "I will be true to the wife, I'll concentrate more on my work," And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

—WH Auden

[movietonight]

I love him

[ID: A tweet by John Finnemore reading "In a national survey, dogs have named W. H. Auden's 'Funeral Blues' as Best Poem for an extraordinary 86th consecutive year."]

[ladyhighever]

Dragon Age Origins - Bioware || Funeral Blues - W. H. Auden ||Reflections - Ana Carrizo || Down Bad - Taylor Swift || Bruise - Jhoanna Lynn Cruz || Parallel Universe - Clara Benin || One Last Poem for Richard - Sandra Cisneros

[wellconstructedsentences]

The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.

W.H. Auden

[victusinveritas]

[literaryvein-reblogs]

A Writer on Writing: W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden:

The interests of a writer and the interests of his readers are never the same and if, on occasion, they happen to coincide, this is a lucky accident.

A writer … is always being asked by people who should know better: “Whom do you write for?” The question is, of course, a silly one, but I can give it a silly answer. Occasionally I come across a book which I feel has been written especially for me and for me only. Like a jealous lover, I don’t want anybody else to hear of it. To have a million such readers, unaware of each other’s existence, to be read with passion and never talked about, is the daydream, surely, of every author.

To keep his errors down to a minimum, the internal Censor to whom a poet submits his work in progress should be a Censorate. It should include, for instance, a sensitive only child, a practical housewife, a logician, a monk, an irreverent buffoon and even, perhaps, hated by all the others and returning their dislike, a brutal, foul-mouthed drill sergeant who considers all poetry rubbish.

Sincerity is like sleep. Normally, one should assume that, of course, one will be sincere, and not give the question a second thought. Most writers, however, suffer occasionally from bouts of insincerity as men do from bouts of insomnia. The remedy in both cases is often quite simple: in the case of the latter, to change one’s diet, in the case of the former, to change one’s company.

Sincerity in the proper sense of the word, meaning authenticity, is, however, or ought to be, a writer’s chief preoccupation. No writer can ever judge exactly how good or bad a work of his may be, but he can always know, not immediately perhaps, but certainly in a short while, whether something he has written is authentic — in his handwriting — or a forgery.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.

- W.H. Auden

[huolestunutananas]

September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden

This poem has been going through my head for years now. I feel it gives a glimmer of hope in these times.

[conservethis]

I found this feather stuck inside a book of poetry by W.H Auden, next to a poem called “Reflections in a Forest”.

Here’s the full text of the poem:

Within a shadowland of trees

Whose lives are so uprightly led

In nude august communities,

To move about seems underbred

And common any taste for words;

When, thoughtlessly, they took to song,

Whatever one may think of birds,

The example that they set was wrong.

In keeping still, in staying slow

For posture and for social ease,

How much these living statues ow

Their scent-and-color languages.

For who can quarrel without terms

For Not or Never, who can raise

Objections when what one affirms

Is necessarily the case?

But trees are trees, an alm or oak

Already both outside and in,

And cannot, therefore, counsel folk

Who have their unity to win.

Turn all tree-signals into speech,

And what comes out is a command:

'Keep running if you want to reach

The point of knowing where you stand.'

A truth at which one should arrive,

Forbids immediate utterance,

And tongues to speak it must contrive

To tell two different lies at once.

My chance of growing would be slim,

Were I with wooden honesty

To show my hand or heart to Him

Who will, if I should lose, be Me.

Our race would not have gotten far,

Had we not learned to bluff it out

And look more certain than we are

Of what our motion is about:

Nor need one be a cop to find

Undressing before others rude:

The most ascetic of our kind

Looks naked in the buff, not nude.