W. H. Auden
British poet and essayist
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.
About a subjugated plain,
Among it's desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, August 1968, 1968
Posted on December 13, 2005 at 8:33 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The most poetical of all scholastic disciplines is, surely, Philology, the study of language in abstraction from its uses, so that words become, as it were, little lyrics about themselves.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, The Dyer's Hand, 1948
Posted on March 31, 2004 at 10:43 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Each year brings new problems of Form and Content,
new foes to tug with: at Twenty I tried to
vex my elders, past Sixty it's the young whom
I hope to bother.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, Shorts, 1970
Posted on October 12, 1999 at 9:30 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Let mortals beware
Of words, for
With words we lie,
Can we say peace
When we mean war,
Foul thoughts speak fair
And promise falsely.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, United Nations Hymn, 1971
Posted on September 2, 1999 at 10:07 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, A Certain World, 1970
Posted on May 17, 1999 at 1:40 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, The Dyer’s Hand, 1948
Posted on July 12, 1999 at 10:26 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, Foreword to The Dyer's Hand, 1948
Posted on December 2, 2002 at 7:32 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear and this leads to violence.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, Quoted in Observer, 1971
Posted on June 16, 2003 at 7:13 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, The Dyer's Hand, 1948
Posted on May 9, 2003 at 7:16 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, The Dyer's Hand, 1948
Posted on August 9, 2001 at 2:53 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
—W. H. Auden, British poet and essayist, In Memory of W. B. Yeats
Posted on May 11, 2001 at 4:35 PM
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