
Auden's last, longest, and most ambitious book-length poem-immediately struck a powerful chord, capturing the imagination of the cultural moment that it diagnosed and named. When it was first published in 1947, The Age of Anxiety-W. Seller Inventory # AAH9780691138152īook Description Hardback.
Auden age of anxiety poem full#
Alan Jacobs's introduction and thorough annotations help today's readers understand and appreciate the full richness of a poem that contains some of Auden's most powerful and beautiful verse, and that still deserves a central place in the canon of twentieth-century poetry.

This volume-the first annotated, critical edition of the poem-introduces this important work to a new generation of readers by putting it in historical and biographical context and elucidating its difficulties. Yet reviews of the poem were sharply divided, and today, despite its continuing fame, it is unjustly neglected by readers. Beginning as a conversation among four strangers in a barroom on New York's Third Avenue, Auden's analysis of Western culture during the Second World War won the Pulitzer Prize and inspired a symphony by Leonard Bernstein as well as a ballet by Jerome Robbins.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.īook Description Hardback. The Age of Anxiety.When it was first published in 1947, The Age of Anxiety-W. Two men leave, and the third disappoints her by passing out drunk. The setting is nighttime at a bar in New York City, where four strangers-three men and one woman-meet, talk, and drink. Auden, published in The poem highlights human isolation, a condition magnified by the lack of tradition or religious belief in the modern age. Auden was born and raised in a heavily industrial section of northern England. Today he is considered one of the most skilled and creative midth century poets who regularly wrote in traditional rhyme and meter. Some critics have called Auden an anti-Romantic-a poet of analytical clarity who sought for order, for universal patterns of human existence. While the teachings of Marx and Freud weighed heavily in his early work, they later gave way to religious and spiritual influences. Much of his poetry is concerned with moral issues and evidences a strong political, social, and psychological context.

Home The Age of Anxiety.Īuden grew up in Birmingham, England and was known for his extraordinary intellect and wit. When it was first published in, The Age of Anxiety -W.
