Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

~ W.h. Auden

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There are good books which are only for adults.There are no good books which are only for children.

~ W.h. Auden

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In short, it became possible - never easy, but possible - in the poet Auden's phrase to find the mortal world enough.

~ Stephen Greenblatt

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Why should I even bother? What's the point, really?He thought for a moment. Who says there has to be a point? he asked. Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.

~ Sarah Dessen

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The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.

~ Helen Bevington

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What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.''I don't know it.''It's a poem.''I gathered.''I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.' I learned the poem in college and it stuck.

~ Steven Rowley

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Auden is an accomplished rhymer and Shakespeare is not.

~ Peter Porter

Peter Porter Auden Poetry Rhyme Shakespeare