PORTRAIT

W.H. Auden 1907–73 English or American? When W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden emigrated to America in 1939 he was already established as a major voice in English literature; he became an American citizen in 1946. The move completed the famous dual migration of great poets with T.S. Eliot having moved to England earlier in the century. For Eliot, moving to England fulfilled his need for a traditional, structured community. Auden’s emigration cannot be couched in national (or nationalistic) terms. The United States for Auden was not so much a society or a history (it was certainly not a politics) but a free space into which he could escape, both personally as a homosexual man and as a poet. America never bulked large in his poetry as a subject in the way that England did for Eliot; a reference to the ‘dives’ of 52nd Street in ‘September 1, 1939’ was one of Auden’s few American references. And he is one of the few major poets actively to edit and re-write already published poems when he collected them. He scrubbed w.h. auden by Soss Efram Melik Charcoal on paper 1972 Image: 46.5cm × 42.5cm (185⁄16 " ×

163⁄4 "), Accurate Sheet: 45.3cm × 30.2cm (1713⁄16 " ×

117⁄8 ") National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian

Institution NPG.80.2

place, personality, and politics from such poems as his series on the Spanish Civil War and his eulogy to W.B. Yeats. Versus the austere constructions of Eliot or Wallace Stevens, Auden mastered a relaxed, ironic style that got at substance obliquely or even indifferently; he praised limestone because it dissolved in water. Auden’s face grew into his style: he became wonderfully lined and shaggy, holding an omnipresent cigarette and wearing his trade-mark carpet slippers. A formidable erudition lurked behind this avuncular presence. In Auden – for example in his ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ – there is often a sense of something going on somewhere else while you’re distracted, something that will end up being more important than what you are focused on. Who else would end a poem on the fall of Rome with: ‘Altogether elsewhere, vast / Herds of reindeer move across / Miles and miles of golden moss, / Silently and very fast.’

david c. ward REPORTS

POEMS

ARTICLES

REVIEWS

CONTENTS

Inside cover Portrait: David C. Ward on W.H. Auden

2 Editorial 3 News & Notes 5 Letters from Silas Gunn, Patrick Crotty, Neil Powell

Neil Powell 6 Ozymandias on the Piccadilly Line Sam Adams 7 Letter from Wales

John Killick and Peter Sansom 9 Small Presses, Large Ambitions

Charles Boyle 11 The E-word Frank Kuppner 11 xTC 2 Matías Serra Bradford 12 The Libraries of our Dreams (translated by Nick Caistor)

Lynn Davidson 14 Five Poems Christopher Middleton 22 Monostichs

Stanley Moss 30 Six Poems Marilyn Hacker 36 Three Poems David Kinloch 40 from I, Giraffe Helen Tookey 42 Four Poems Angela Leighton 43 Two Poems

Brian Jones 48 From Voltaire’s Garden and Other Entanglements Rodney Pybus 52 Two Poems Joey Connolly 55 The Rider’s Song David Romanda 56 Four Poems Fiona Sampson 60 Five Dreams and Jacob in the Afternoon

Donald Rayfield 16 Inventing Russia

John Lucas 25 ‘Cost and Care’: The Aesthete’s Progress Tony Roberts 32 Lowell (and Bishop) on the Slopes of Parnassus William Wootten 38 in conversation with David Kinloch Paul McLoughlin 44 Romantic Agoraphobia: The Poetry of Brian Jones

Iain Bamforth 53 Stendhal’s Syndrome Stephen Burt 57 Without Evidence David Herman 62 Bringing Distance to Life: Josef Herman (1911–2000)

Oliver Dixon 67 on Jonathan Galassi’s Leopardi Ross Cogan 68 on Edith Sitwell Andrew Walls 69 on Norman MacCaig and Alisdair Gray David C. Ward 70 on Adrienne Rich Tony Roberts 71 on Louis Simpson

Joey Connolly 72 on Robert Hass David C. Ward 73 on Rae Armantraut Richard Kostelanetz 74 on Charles Bernstein

Alex Wylie 75 on Paul Muldoon André Naffis-Sahely 76 on Mark Ford

John Muckle 77 on Mary Leader and Elaine Randell Alison Brackenbury 79 on Anne Berkeley, Carrie Etter and Diana Pooley

Vesna Main 80 on Gabriel Josipovici

81 Some Contributors

Cover image: The Memory of a Pogrom, Josef Herman (pencil and gouache version), private collection

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central books ltd, 99 Wallis Road, London e9 5ln email magazines@centralbooks.com Copyright © 2011 poetry nation review

All rights reserved issn 0144-7076 isbn 978 1 84777 040 0

General Editor michael schmidt Co-ordinating Editor helen tookey News & Notes Editor eleanor crawforth editorial address: Michael Schmidt Department of English University of Glasgow 5 University Gardens

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