September 1, 1939: a biography of a poem

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date
[2019]
Language
English

Description

One poet, his poem, New York City, and a world on the verge of change.W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality, became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left. And his poem, “September 1, 1939,” was his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed—or been condemned—to a tragic and unexpected afterlife.

These are the contributing forces underlying Ian Sansom’s work excavating the man and his most celebrated piece of literature. But Sansom’s book is also about New York City: an island, an emblem of the Future, magnificent, provisional, seamy, and in 1939—about to emerge as the defining twentieth-century cosmopolis, the capital of the world.

And so it is also about a world at a point of change—about 1939, and about our own Age of Anxiety, about the aftermath of September 11, when many American newspapers reprinted Auden’s poem in its entirety on their editorial pages.

More than a work of literary criticism or literary biography, this is a record of why and how we create and respond to great poetry.

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ISBN
9780062984593

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Published Reviews

Booklist Review

To call Sansom's close reading of ""September 1, 1939,"" one of W. H. Auden's most famous poems, especially once it was fervently shared in the aftermath of 9/11, an exercise in obsession might be a bit harsh, but then again it did take 25 years to complete. A novelist and nonfiction writer who regularly contributes to the Guardian and the London Review of Books, Sansom dives thoughtfully into this complex conundrum of a poem that Auden struggled with for so long, going so far as to exile it from his own collections, rewriting and editing it, finally calling it the most dishonest poem I have ever written. Along the way we find out that dives in the first line of the poem very likely refers to an actual dive called the Dizzy Club, a well-known gay bar that Auden frequently cruised. On a more technical note, Sansom explains that the poem is made up of nine stanzas, each one long sentence. Sansom's careful and compelling analysis ventures into memoir and a thinker's guide for would-be writers. The bibliography, Twenty-Five Years' Worth of Reading, is impressive and fun. Poetry lovers and readers intrigued by Auden and his considerable influence will have a rollicking time with this entertaining yet earnest tome.--Raúl Niño Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Kirkus Book Review

W.H. Auden's famous poem receives an impressionistic, idiosyncratic examination from fellow poet, mystery writer, and jack-of-all-literary trades Sansom (English/Univ. of Warwick; December Stories I, 2018, etc.).Don't expect conventional literary criticism or an exegesis of the poem's historical and autobiographical underpinnings in this rambling, fitfully stimulating work. Structured as a stanza-by-stanza exploration, the text is in fact extremely scattershot; Sansom takes 100 pages to get through Auden's first stanza, leaving 200 breathless pages for the next eight. Indeed, the text generally has a breathless, tossed-off air, though the author tells us he has been trying to write about Auden for 25 years. The plethora of literary extracts scattered throughout, by Auden and others, might testify to Sansom's deep knowledge of literatureor might just signal an author substituting quotation for inspiration. He certainly knows a lot about Auden, and there are flashes of genuine perceptiveness: "that weird combination in [Auden's] work of mental toughness and piercing insights, and also a deep, sweet sentimentality." (Sansom takes a more jaundiced tone about Auden's sentimental tendencies when he gets to the poem's most famous line, "We must love one another or die," and dismisses it with a brisk, "No. Just, no.") Sansom never conveys the sense of personal connection that presumably led him to grapple with Auden and his work. Instead, we get uninteresting personal trivia, such as the author's feelings of inferiority to real Auden scholars like John Fuller and Edward Mendelson or the fact that he, like Auden, reads a lot of crime fiction. The latter remark is followed by the vague claim that "it's hard not to imagine Auden as some sort of detectiveone of those professional amateurs beloved of crime writers." Whether a reader finds this sort of aperu charming or not is a good forecast of what their overall reaction to the book will be.Knowledgeable and occasionally insightful but also undisciplined and self-indulgent. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* To call Sansom's close reading of September 1, 1939, one of W. H. Auden's most famous poems, especially once it was fervently shared in the aftermath of 9/11, an exercise in obsession might be a bit harsh, but then again it did take 25 years to complete. A novelist and nonfiction writer who regularly contributes to the Guardian and the London Review of Books, Sansom dives thoughtfully into this complex conundrum of a poem that Auden struggled with for so long, going so far as to exile it from his own collections, rewriting and editing it, finally calling it "the most dishonest poem I have ever written." Along the way we find out that "dives" in the first line of the poem very likely refers to an actual dive called the Dizzy Club, a well-known gay bar that Auden frequently cruised. On a more technical note, Sansom explains that the poem is made up of nine stanzas, each one long sentence. Sansom's careful and compelling analysis ventures into memoir and a thinker's guide for would-be writers. The bibliography, "Twenty-Five Years' Worth of Reading," is impressive and fun. Poetry lovers and readers intrigued by Auden and his considerable influence will have a rollicking time with this entertaining yet earnest tome. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.
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