It is with the passage just before on which I want to focus, though, as it contains one of the finest descriptions of вЂњImpostor SyndromeвЂќ that I have read. There is also a longish passage that resembles ChaucerвЂ™s House of Fame, in which Auden encounters a number of вЂњgreat masters,вЂќ his literary forebears-Dante, Blake, Dryden, Tennyson, Hardy, Rilke (whom he bizarrely calls вЂњThe Santa Claus of lonelinessвЂќ). Some passages echo the desperately hortatory tone of вЂњSeptember 1, 1939.вЂќ There are stanzas ripped from the headlines, clusters that veer into the vatic, and parts that reflect on the supposed innocence of the past. There are a number of confessional sections and passages where the poet remembers the epistolary frame of the poem, addressing Elizabeth Mayer, its dedicatee. There is an ars poetica section (вЂњArt in intention is mimesis / But, realised, the resemblance ceases / Art is not life and can not be / A midwife to society, / For Art is a fait accompliвЂќ). вЂњNew Year LetterвЂќ reads less like a single train of thought than a portfolio of poetic genres or moods. In what follows, I hope to pace through some of its stanzas, thinking about what separated it from the вЂњdishonestyвЂќ of вЂњSeptember 1, 1939вЂќ and how the greater honesty of вЂњNew Year Letter,вЂќ in its (I agree) more demanding mixture of the personal and the political can help us perhaps be more honest with ourselves this year. Auden did not, however, disown вЂњNew Year Letter.вЂќ It appears-complete-in his Collected Poems, and we should be grateful: it is a rich, relentlessly searching poem, and well worth reading at the New Year-perhaps annually! вЂњNew Year LetterвЂќ is a much longer poem, but its amalgamation of the ominous and the epic, the topical and the universal, the almost maudlin and the hard-boiled, the lapidary and the singsong is identical: the length only amplifies his characteristic talents and faults. Yet only four months later he began a poem that, outwardly at least, resembles вЂњSeptember 1, 1939вЂќ closely in its brooding on the вЂњvast spiritual disordersвЂќ of the age.

AudenвЂ™s most famous poems is вЂњ September 1, 1939,вЂќ which you likely remember from its well-known denomination of the 1930s as вЂњa low dishonest decadeвЂќ and its soaring admonition: вЂњWe must love one another or die.вЂќ (This poem-and that line in particular-is luminously glossed by Spencer Lenfield at the JHI Blog here.) Auden hated that poem, however: he called it вЂњthe most dishonest poem I have ever writtenвЂќ and carried his recantation into the curation of his works-it does not appear (by his wish) in his Collected Poems.

Auden age of anxiety excerpts