September 1, 1939 Audiobook By Ian Sansom cover art

September 1, 1939

W. H. Auden and the Afterlife of a Poem

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September 1, 1939

By: Ian Sansom
Narrated by: Ian Sansom
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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 Limited Americas Art & Literature Authors Europe European Great Britain Literary History & Criticism United States World Literature
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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

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If you care about Auden

If you care about the world and care about language then you probably know that poetry is one of the great joys of life and one of the great sorrows. In that case you should listen to this book.

Tremendous, personal journey through one over quoted, misquoted, abused and disowned poem. Doesn't matter if you're new to Auden or a battered veteran. You'll learn plenty. Plus, Sansom's self-deprecating brit humor is worth the price of admission.

Highly recommended.

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