Tell Me the Truth About Love

While most poems fly over my head, Auden's poetry has always made sense to me. It's beautiful without being too abstract and it always seems to strike a chord for me. Auden had a wonderful gift for conveying emotion in only a few lines. This sweet collection includes one of my favorite poems, "Funeral Blues." Here's one section from the poem...

"He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."

It just makes my heart ache. I also loved the poem "Lullaby," here's a taste...

"Not a whisper, not a thought, 
Not a kiss nor look be lost."

This collection of Auden's poems is perhaps not the greatest but, it is, in the main, Auden at his most cheerful: a welcome antidote to the Davenport-Hines biography which I read alongside this collection.

The title poem is a song, written for a musical show: nothing wrong in that but, a source of an amusing rhyme, rather than an opportunity for great poetry. Other works do add to our admiration for one of the twentieth century's greatest poets, such as 'Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly' and 'Funeral Blues'.

Ten lovely poems that try to describe just what is this thing called love. Two particular favorites: the light and lyrical "O Tell Me The Truth About Love" ("Some say that love's a little boy, And some say it's a bird, Some say it makes the world go round, And some say that's absurd...") and the incomparably crushing "Funeral Blues" ("He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.") (JAF)

This little collection of poems is what got me started reading Auden's poetry. A wonderful little collection. His poetry is easy to read and enjoy, and makes him a good entry point for someone looking to getting into reading poetry.

"Funeral blues", after seeing Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Probably the first poem in English I truly read (after "Mirror" by Sylvia Plath). The beauty, the truth of it, the practicality of it almost. I do not know anything about W.H. Auden, and it doesn't matter, somehow. I almost do not want to know about his private life. The poem. like a well made painting, is enough.

A slim volume (no room for writing on the spine, even), probably made most (justly) famous by a reading of "Funeral Blues" in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. A little bitter, often biting.

W. H. Auden wrote some of the greatest love poetry of the twentieth century. This book contains ten of his poems about love. They range in mood from the exhilaration of a new love affair, through love's anxieties and fears, to the sorrow that comes with the end of love.