September 1, 1939
W. H. Auden and the Afterlife of a Poem
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September 1, 1939
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Narrated by:
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Ian Sansom
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By:
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Ian Sansom
About this listen
This is a book about a poet, about a poem, about a city, and about a world at a point of change. More than a work of literary criticism or literary biography, it is a record of why and how we create and respond to great poetry.
This is a book about a poet – W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality who became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left.
About a poem – ‘September 1, 1939’, his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed – or been condemned – to a tragic and unexpected afterlife.
About a city – New York, an island, an emblem of the Future, magnificent, provisional, seamy, and in 1939 about to emerge as the defining twentieth-century cosmopolis, the capital of the world.
And about a world at a point of change – about 1939, and about our own Age of Anxiety, about the aftermath of September 11, when many American newspapers reprinted Auden’s poem in its entirety on their editorial pages.
©2019 Ian Sansom (P)2019 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
‘Sansom has given us a book in which all serious readers of Auden will find something to value. He has chosen exactly the right poem for our times to anchor his thoughts on this man who came to define a generation’ Literary Review
‘Richly entertaining … explores what goes on in the poem and why it has had such an impact. Shandyesque and magpie-like, scholarly yet frolicsome, the book makes room for all manner of diverse material, to great effect’ Blake Morrison, Guardian
highly recommended.
a special treat
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There’s a lot to admire in Ian Sansom’s book. Not least is that he doesn’t pretend he can deliver anything (following a 25 year endeavour) that he feels himself unable to - and yet he succeeds in delivering so much in this book.
It’s read engagingly and with clarity (not a given with audiobooks - thank goodness for samples!). The author offers an informed, insightful, self-effacing journey, unraveling Auden and includes wit and well applied personal anecdotes. Mr Sansom could be speaking with you in a pub over a drink which is perhaps the highest praise I can give.
You get the impression that here is a book the author had to get out of their system. Are there expressions of impostor syndrome? Seemed so and can relate as another ‘product’ of a ‘bog standard secondary modern school myself.’ This is a style of biography I’ve enjoyed. The author really went down the back of the sofa, exhausting innumerable literary corners and other sources to produce this book. For someone new to WH Auden and his work, this audiobook has provided a fascinating introduction to both. Thank you ‘pofessorial’ Mr Sansom.
We read to read (in this case listen to) what others have read
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