Chekhov's Mistress
AudenPalooza
Continued from DylanPalooza
By all accounts I’ve been listening to Dylan since I was about four years old (which would have been 1968); long before I had a say in the matter. I can’t say the same thing about W.H. Auden, but it seemed like most of the speakers at Saturday’s Rereading Auden program had lived with his poetry since their youth.
The small stage at Gould Hall on the Upper East Side of Manhattan had larger-than-life Auden photos as a backdrop and was otherwise black – the photos were effective for an event that was as much about the poet as his poetry, even if the stage was a cold setting.
As in the Dylan documentary everyone had a story to tell, like J.D. McClatchy’s famous story about approaching Auden for an autograph and the elder poet saying to the younger, “turn around and bend over” before using his back to sign the book. McClatchy delivered that as though for the thousandth time, which indeed he has, though he didn’t mention it then, his poem “Auden’s O.E.D.” tells that tale in verse.
Although many critics have dismissed his post-30’s work, most of the speakers sought to address Auden’s relevance throughout his career. But this wasn’t a critical debate, this was an appreciation and for that it was well done. Each speaker took some aspect of the poet’s work, talked about it and read relevant passages.
The readers weren’t uniform in their level of insight or recitation abilities – in fact, Hilton Als did nothing more than uncomfortably read an article he wrote – still, taken as a whole, the perspective of poets, critics and just plain readers gave the afternoon an air of coffee-house discussion, despite the stage.
Ian McEwan, whose novel “Atonement” drew from his poetry, talked about Auden’s love of science and how that manifested itself throughout his work; not just overtly, but in small ways how science and the insights he drew from it filtered into his poems.
Other readers included Louis Menand (one of the reasons I subscribe to the New Yorker), Mark Strand, Katha Pollitt, Craig Raine and Helen Vendler. Adam Gopnik lead things off and sounded a bit like he was taking notes from his 2002 article on Auden, “The Double Man.”
The hall was dark so I couldn’t jot down any notes on what stood out so I have little more than impressions to share. Craig Raine’s reading was particularly good, as was Helen Vendler who more than anyone talked about the poetry in prosodic terms and left me wanting to go back and read some more of her work, although I don’t know of anything specifically she’s written about Auden.
So the weekend is over, I’m re-reading Auden and re-listening to Dylan.
Selected Links:
Auden photos
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