W.H. Auden

dedicated to Wystan Hugh Auden. Have a question about Auden? His poetry? His life? His friends? His sexuality? Ask away.

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— W.H. Auden

from Katherine Bucknell’s Juvenilia: Poems, 1922-1928.

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— W.H. Auden

from Katherine Bucknell’s Juvenilia: Poems, 1922-1928. Auden was born 21 February 1907, which means he was 18 when he wrote this poem. 

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— W.H. Auden

from Katherine Bucknell’s Juvenilia: Poems, 1922-1928. Auden was born 21 February 1907, which means he was 18 when he wrote this poem. 

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--W.H. Auden, from his first publication of poems, 1928

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I knew from Wystan's private conversation since his Ann Arbor days and from his explicit verses, such as 'Aubade' in 'Three Posthumous Poems,' that he found 'The Platonic Blow' too hot to include in his published work. While the substance of this underground pornographic classic is central to Wystan's animal nature and private personality, its explicit lines broke the barriers of permissiveness, causing him to repress it as a low classic; and by 'low' I mean that the poem restricts itself to a lower and a lesser audience than that earned by his broader mainstream poems. Yet, because it is written in lean, pure verse that rings with narrative skill, 'The Platonic Blow' is likely to live long in underground literature.

from Charles Miller's Auden: An American Friendship

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I pondered on the reasons why Wystan himself was a "lonely" in America. Naturally, after his eighteen years coupled with Chester, Wystan had "married"problems; Chester had long since declared his sexual independence and was often away, usually involved with other men, while Wystan was usually alone. Too much alone. If one hadn't experienced it many times, one would hardly believe that Wystan's listed telephone didn't ring for hours on end, or for days; for he belonged to no group, no club, no faculty (for most of his Manhattan years), no company, or corporation. He was, truly, 'One after whom none thing it worth to turn.'

from Charles Miller's Auden: An American Friendship

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'A day or so later, Wystan declared cheerfully, 'Dear me, I do feel queer today.' I had nothing to offer, for--alas--I felt quite otherwise, even while I observed that Wystan appeared no more or less queer than usual; but I was interested to note that he used the word 'queer' in private and 'homosexual' in public and at-homes, although he used neither in his classes. I recall his first forthright 'I am a homosexual man,' in a time when such assertions were rare. When he used the word 'queer' he pronounced it clearly, but his 'dear' had an r so soft it sounded like 'deah' to me; and I heard it often, for to English Wystan, almost everybody was a 'deah' until proven otherwise.

-- from Charles Miller's Auden: An American Friendship

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One morning Wystan flicked his breakfast Lucky at invisible ghosts and began an amiable tirade, which I transposed in shorthand into my journal:

'Charlie, it's amazing that no one has really written about the true America, the land of the lonely! The land of eccentricities and outcast lonelies. "The Lonelies" could be the title of a grand unwritten American novel. ...'

Puffing intently on his cigarette, Wystan continued, 'There is always hope for a "lonely," always a chance that the lonely may find someone. For actually, any place you go, any place *on earth*, may have someone, if only you can find that one!' He finished, staring into the gray cloud of smoke he puffed toward the window and the lonely world beyond it.

-- from Charles Miller's Auden: An American Friendship

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W.H. Auden falling through a glass door from Charles Miller’s Auden: An American Friendship

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— recalled by Strowan Robertson, a student at the University of Michigan where Auden taught a lecture course in 1941 from Charles Miller’s Auden: An American Friendship

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— from Charles Miller’s Auden: An American Friendship

[the-night-picture-collector]

“Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh. There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.”

- W.H. Auden

Photo: Cecil Beaton, 1967

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The Platonic Blow

It was a spring day, a day for a lay, when the air Smelled like a locker-room, a day to blow or get blown; Returning from lunch I turned my corner and there On a near-by stoop I saw him standing alone.

I glanced as I advanced. The clean white T-shirt outlined A forceful torso: the light-blue denims divulged Much. I observed the snug curves where they hugged the behind, I watched the crotch where the cloth intriguingly bulged.

Our eyes met. I felt sick. My knees turned weak. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to say. In a blur I hear words, myself like a stranger speak “Will you come to my room?” Then a husky voice “O.K.”

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I produced some beer and we talked. Like a little boy He told me his story. Present address: next door. Half Polish, half Irish. The youngest. From Illinois. Profession: mechanic. Name: Bud. Age: twenty-four.

He put down his glass and stretched his bare arms along The back of my sofa. The afternoon sunlight struck The blond hairs on the wrist near my head. His chin was strong. His mouth sucky. I could hardly believe my luck.

And here he was, sitting beside me, legs apart. I could bear it no longer. I touched the inside of his thigh. His reply was to move it closer. I trembled, my heart Thumped and jumped as my fingers went to his fly.

I opened the gap in the flap. I went in there. I sought for a slit in the gripper shorts that had charge Of the basket I asked for. I came to warm flesh, then to hair. I went on. I found what I hoped. I groped. It was large.

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Keep reading

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Your would-be lover who has never come In the great bed at midnight to your arms.

Such dreams are amorous; they are indeed: But no one but myself is loved in these, And time flies on above the dreamer’s head, Flies on, flies on, and with your beauty flies. All things he takes and loses but conceit, The Alec who can buy the life within, License no liberty except his own, Order the fireworks after the defeat.

— W.H. Auden, ‘The earth turns over, our side feels the cold’, also titled “Through the Looking-Glass”, version quoted from The English Auden, 1933

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We ride a turning globe, we stand on a star; It has thrust us up together; it is stronger than we. In it our separate sorrows are a single hope, It's in its nature always to appear Behind us as we move With linked arms through our dreams, Wherefore, apart, we love Its sundering streams.

W.H. Auden, ‘The chimneys are smoking’, 1932

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1

Turn not towards me lest I turn to you: Stretch not your hands towards your harm and me Lest, waking, you should feel the need I do To offer love’s preposterous guarantee That the stars watch us, that there are no poor, No boyish weakness justifying scorn, To cancel off from the forgotten score The foiled caresses from which thought was born.

Yes, sleep: how easily may we do good To those we have no wish to see again; Love knows he argues with himself in vain, He means to do no mischief but he would. Love would content us: that is untrue. Turn not towards me, lest I turn to you.

– W.H. Auden, unpublished sonnet sequence, 1933

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fun fact: Per Edward Mendelson, the original first line of this poem (from a sonnet sequence which Auden sent to Isherwood in late 1934 and parts of which have been uncollected or unpublished) was arguably one of the best Auden lines of all time: ‘Sleep on beside me though I wake for you’. 

Source: Mendelson’s The English Auden, pp. 423.

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1

Turn not towards me lest I turn to you: Stretch not your hands towards your harm and me Lest, waking, you should feel the need I do To offer love's preposterous guarantee That the stars watch us, that there are no poor, No boyish weakness justifying scorn, To cancel off from the forgotten score The foiled caresses from which thought was born.

Yes, sleep: how easily may we do good To those we have no wish to see again; Love knows he argues with himself in vain, He means to do no mischief but he would. Love would content us: that is untrue. Turn not towards me, lest I turn to you.

– W.H. Auden, unpublished sonnet sequence, 1933