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Look, Stranger!
. Faber, 1934 2nd imp, clean copy no markings, no dustjacket, Professional booksellers since 1981
- GenresPoetry
Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1936
1 person is currently reading
58 people want to read
About the author
W.H. Auden
620 books1,070 followersPoems, published in such collections as
Look, Stranger!
(1936) and
The Shield of Achilles
(1955), established importance of British-American writer and critic Wystan Hugh Auden in 20th-century literature.
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
In and near Birmingham, he developed in a professional middle-class family. He attended English independent schools and studied at Christ church, Oxford. From 1927, Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship despite briefer but more intense relations with other men. Auden passed a few months in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.
He then spent five years from 1930 to 1935, teaching in English schools and then traveled to Iceland and China for books about his journeys. People noted stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content. He came to wide attention at the age of 23 years in 1930 with his first book, Poems ; The Orators followed in 1932.
Three plays in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood in 1935 to 1938 built his reputation in a left-wing politics.
People best know this Anglo for love such as "Funeral Blues," for political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939," for culture and psychology, such as The Age of Anxiety , and for religion, such as For the Time Being and "Horae Canonicae." In 1939, partly to escape a liberal reputation, Auden moved to the United States. Auden and Christopher Isherwood maintained a lasting but intermittent sexual friendship to 1939. In 1939, Auden fell in lust with Chester Kallman and regarded their relation as a marriage.
From 1941, Auden taught in universities. This relationship ended in 1941, when Chester Kallman refused to accept the faithful relation that Auden demanded, but the two maintained their friendship.
Auden taught in universities through 1945. His work, including the long For the Time Being and The Sea and the Mirror , in the 1940s focused on religious themes. He attained citizenship in 1946.
The title of his long The Age of Anxiety , a popular phrase, described the modern era; it won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. From 1947, he wintered in New York and summered in Ischia. From 1947, Auden and Chester Kallman lived in the same house or apartment in a non-sexual relation and often collaborated on opera libretti, such as The Rake's Progress for music of Igor Stravinsky until death of Auden.
Occasional visiting professorships followed in the 1950s. From 1956, he served as professor at Oxford. He wintered in New York and summered in Ischia through 1957. From 1958, he wintered usually in New York and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria.
He served as professor at Oxford to 1961; his popular lectures with students and faculty served as the basis of his prose The Dyer's Hand in 1962.
Auden, a prolific prose essayist, reviewed political, psychological and religious subjects, and worked at various times on documentary films, plays, and other forms of performance. Throughout his controversial and influential career, views on his work ranged from sharply dismissive, treating him as a lesser follower of William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot, to strongly affirmative, as claim of Joseph Brodsky of his "greatest mind of the twentieth century."
He wintered in Oxford in 1972/1973 and summered in Kirchstetten, Austria, until the end of his life.
After his death, films, broadcasts, and popular media enabled people to know and ton note much more widely "Funeral Blues," "Musée des Beaux Arts," "Refugee Blues," "The Unknown Citizen," and "September 1, 1939," t
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 21, 2020
No Auden, don't disrupt your imagery and flow with a contrived rhyme you're so sexy ahaha
September 28, 2013
All description can only be clumsy and ill-fitted to the richness and beauty of these poems. I'll keep this by my bedside always, I believe.
August 16, 2014
These love poems are very consciously linked to the world of the 1930s. Some of them were difficult to follow because of references to places and people we are no longer familiar with today. however, the use of language is beautiful and at times moving, and there is variety of metre and rhyme.
Note the picture here is of Poems, but the book I read is Look, Stranger!
I would recommend to lovers of 20th century poetry.
Note the picture here is of Poems, but the book I read is Look, Stranger!
I would recommend to lovers of 20th century poetry.
July 6, 2025
This is far from being my favorite poetry collection I've ever read, but it was... thought-provoking. The syntax being so difficult to read in most of the poems did make me do a lot of research, which was good, but I tend to prefer poetry when it is immediately impactful. In my opinion though while some of the poems shared similar themes and ideas, some of them were really out of place.
3.27
3.27
March 21, 2025
revolution as a mystic quest for the Great Unknown
—written on pg 12 of the copy I read
—written on pg 12 of the copy I read
July 13, 2018
I liked this. I'm not sure I understood it all. It's definitely one to be re-visited so that you can dig the meaning from it all.
Published in 1936 it does seem haunted by the threat of fascism and the effects of the First World War. The impact of a modern world. It's almost elegiac - which is almost certainly the wrong word - for a lost peace and haunted by what is to come.
I'm not sure what else to say as I need to let this settle a bit, perhaps re-visit one or two of the poems I struggled the most to understand.
Published in 1936 it does seem haunted by the threat of fascism and the effects of the First World War. The impact of a modern world. It's almost elegiac - which is almost certainly the wrong word - for a lost peace and haunted by what is to come.
I'm not sure what else to say as I need to let this settle a bit, perhaps re-visit one or two of the poems I struggled the most to understand.
November 11, 2015
I "Auden" to have bothered with this collection. Haha--funny guy, right? Unnecessarily long "poems" of Auden muttering to himself about a very particular time and place.
I really, really wish I enjoyed Auden more, but he just seems like such thin soup, and it's hard to bother with broth when there are so many other possibilities at hand--shrimp bisque, crab chili, jambalaya, mulligatawny. . .
I really, really wish I enjoyed Auden more, but he just seems like such thin soup, and it's hard to bother with broth when there are so many other possibilities at hand--shrimp bisque, crab chili, jambalaya, mulligatawny. . .
August 12, 2020
Rich, cryptic, bountiful. More & more relevant again in its sense of creeping human disaster.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews