Auden, Wystan Hugh

(1907-1973)

   A Yorkshire man who moved to the USA in 1939 and became an American citizen in 1946, Auden taught in several American universities. He returned to England in 1956, when he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford University. After graduating from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1928, and a year in Berlin, he became a schoolteacher noted for his caring and wisdom. His poem "Spain" (1937) was influenced by his experiences of driving an ambulance in Spain for the Republican side. He died in Vienna and was buried in Kirchstetten, and is commemorated by a stone in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. Auden's work ranges from rigorous traditional to original yet intricate, as well as the technical forms. He was also partly responsible for reintroducing Anglo-Saxon accentual meter (fixed number of stresses per line or stanza regardless of the number of syllables that are present) to English poetry. Some of his poems: "A New Age," "As I Walked Out One Evening," "Give Me a Doctor," "In Memory of W.B. Yeats," "Old People's Home," "The Fall of Rome," "The Unknown Citizen," "We Too Had Known Golden Hours."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Poemhunter (www.poemhunter.com). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http:// www.columbiagrangers.org). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Westminster Abbey Official Guide (no date).