Contains poems about people, places and the intellectual climate of the times. This volume by Auden was published after his departure to America with Christopher Isherwood in January 1939.
The Devourers are the political types who depend on what is already produced for their well-being: the "Judges, Policemen, Critics. These are the real Lower Orders, the low, sly lives, whom no decent person should receive in his house.
Originally published: New York: Random House, 1947. "Fascinating and hair-raising."--Leonard Bernstein "[One of] Auden's outstanding American works."--Stephen Spender
This new edition includes previously censored poems, together with Auden's remarkable introduction and a new preface by his literary executor, Edward Mendelson.
Given that definition, the 123 poems in this collection all qualify; they are as accessible as popular songs yet have the wisdom and profundity of the greatest poetry.
When Auden and MacNeice travelled in Iceland together in 1936, the verse, prose, letters and notes they recorded would appear the following year as 'Letters from Iceland'.