![]() ![]() Rather than representing the poems as they appeared in the original collections (as Peter McDonald has done in his magnificent new edition of Louis MacNeice's Collected Poems) Mendelson has again chosen to honour Auden's own peculiar habit of radically editing and then rearranging his poetry in roughly chronological order, with each period representing what Auden believed was "a new chapter in my life". It all seems extremely portentous and strained, but then Auden was only 21 when he wrote it. It's a shame then that the Collected Poems begins with "Paid on Both Sides", Auden's 1928 show-off play, which is a kind of revenge tragedy featuring dream sequences, soliloquies, a Chorus, Father Christmas, and characters called Bo, Po, and "The Man-Woman". ![]() In the year of the centenary of Auden's birth, and with the publication of the new Collected Poems, readers should perhaps try to overcome irrational prejudice or excitement, and take a long hard look at the evidence.Įdward Mendelson, Auden's literary executor, has added a new "note" to his earlier preface, which sets out to reposition Auden not as a heartless brainbox, but as the great 20th-century poet of love. ![]()
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