Auden in America: "New Year letter" and the Anglo-American "Double Man"

£6.99

Symbiosis 7.1 118-135
Author: Aidan Wasley

This micro-ebook, 'Auden in America: ‘New Year Letter’ and the Anglo-American ‘Double Man’' by Aidan Wasley, provides an in-depth analysis of W. H. Auden's transformation as a poet upon his emigration to America. Originally published in Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, this essay explores Auden's self-reinvention and the cultural impact of his first major American poem, 'New Year Letter.' Wasley delves into the intellectual and artistic environment of 1930s New York, examining how Auden's new surroundings influenced his poetic practice and his vision of an inclusive, democratic society. This scholarly work is essential for those interested in Anglo-American literary relations, modernist poetry, and the evolution of poetic identity.

Essay Excerpt

"When W. H. Auden sailed out of Southampton with Christopher Isherwood on January 18, 1939, he was doing more than simply leaving behind friends, family, and a record of poetic achievement that had made him already, at the age of 32, England’s most prominent and influential public poet. When he arrived in a cold and snowy New York harbor a week later, he was embarking on a quest of poetic and self-reinvention that would change the course of both English and American poetry. Auden’s emigration from England, and his arrival in America, marked a crucial moment in 20th-century literary history, when the heir-apparent to T. S. Eliot as the dominant presence in British poetry abandoned his English career and retraced Eliot’s own path back across the Atlantic to start anew."