Preface
Published in The Atlantic in 1944
W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden was a poet best known for works like “Funeral Blues,” “September 1, 1939,” and “The Shield of Achilles.” He also wrote prose works such as The Dyer’s Hand, film scripts, and musical works, and he served as a professor of poetry at Oxford. He published his first poem for The Atlantic in 1939, the year he emigrated from England to the United States.
Latest
Miki Lowe for The Atlantic Making and Judging Poetry
Last spring two distinguished Englishmen were nominated to fill the chair of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, W. H. AUDEN and Harold Nicolson. There was heated argument among the dons and undergraduates; signs reading“Auden for Prof” were chalked on the walls; and when at last the votes were counted, it was indeed the poet who had been elected. On his inauguration Mr. Auden, after paying his respects to the office and to the line of distinguished scholars and poets who had preceded him, began to speak of the Censor, that inner voice and self-critic who occupies and determines each individual poet in his time.