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About the House
At least half of these poems are about the rooms in Mr. Auden's House in Vienna. The others are new poems, on various subjects, previously uncollected.
This is Mr. Auden's first collection of poems since Homage to Clio, which was published in 1960.
-From the inside flap
This is Mr. Auden's first collection of poems since Homage to Clio, which was published in 1960.
-From the inside flap
94 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1965
About the author
W.H. Auden
605 books1,090 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 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 12, 2019
Auden, in his old age, had two fully-developed personas: the Walter Matthau clone, for publicly he was a Grumpy Old Man; and the archly playful private lover.
His friends came to expect quick shifts between EACH of these extremes: grim sourpuss and syrupy-sweet flirt.
So this volume, his last (should you be so lucky to run across a copy in those wonderful Neighbourhood garage sales that spring up like fungi during the fabled time of Spring Cleaning) never disappoints.
It always shocks and surprises.
Take my favourite among this Embarras de Richesses du Veillard Célèbre:
Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
You beckon me to fraternize
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.
I Told you it was an embarrassment!
Tch, tch, Wystan, you old grump…
This book is a homey poetic marvel of pure comic domestic unbuttonedness!
His friends came to expect quick shifts between EACH of these extremes: grim sourpuss and syrupy-sweet flirt.
So this volume, his last (should you be so lucky to run across a copy in those wonderful Neighbourhood garage sales that spring up like fungi during the fabled time of Spring Cleaning) never disappoints.
It always shocks and surprises.
Take my favourite among this Embarras de Richesses du Veillard Célèbre:
Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
You beckon me to fraternize
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.
I Told you it was an embarrassment!
Tch, tch, Wystan, you old grump…
This book is a homey poetic marvel of pure comic domestic unbuttonedness!
April 16, 2024
Hard to believe these are written by the same poet who penned "Funeral Blues", a piece full of emotion and pathos. The poems in this collection mostly felt dry, over-intellectualized, and academic. I'd read one quickly, get little from it, and then have to overcome internal resistance in order to move on to the next one.
Auden was a Professor of Poetry at Oxford University (so the bio at the end of this book tells me), so he's clearly no slouch. Perhaps safest to say the poems just didn't speak to me.
Auden was a Professor of Poetry at Oxford University (so the bio at the end of this book tells me), so he's clearly no slouch. Perhaps safest to say the poems just didn't speak to me.
July 31, 2017
The poems in About the House examine modern life from the safety of the four walls of home, a safety that gradually shows itself to be built on a series of uneasy truces becoming more and more unstable in the age of mass movements and comfort as an ideology. Auden moves from room to room, and from perfunctory function to perfunctory function (food is a favorite theme; defecation even makes an appearance), looking for the threads that bind us together and finding the ways Modernism is fraying those threads.
Comfort is one of the main culprits guilty of this unraveling, and Auden reveals its pernicious side in sometimes funny and sometimes dark ways. Another culprit, perhaps the main one, is the loss and rejection of authority and hierarchy. We don't miss authority for its own sake, according to Auden, but for the sake of the tradition and history to which it points us, and which has also slipped into the oblivion of forgetfulness. Auden holds our gaze to the fracturing of culture and to our own insatiable appetites, not simply to horrify us, but to make our hearts warm to the things we have lost in a way that will motivate us to find them again.
One of the best poems in the book is "The Common Life," in which Auden uses the concept of the living room to explore how humans in the modern age relate to one another. The living room becomes in the poem a "catholic" area for exploring a "secular faith"—the soul of the room reflects the soul of the one who keeps it. Individuals entering the room are "protestant" in their individuation—Auden invokes the philosophical categories of "I" and "Thou" to show how we find ourselves in opposition and how we mutually strive to overcome it.
Auden may have been the last true poet. As one of his later books, then, About the House may be one of the last true books of poetry.
Comfort is one of the main culprits guilty of this unraveling, and Auden reveals its pernicious side in sometimes funny and sometimes dark ways. Another culprit, perhaps the main one, is the loss and rejection of authority and hierarchy. We don't miss authority for its own sake, according to Auden, but for the sake of the tradition and history to which it points us, and which has also slipped into the oblivion of forgetfulness. Auden holds our gaze to the fracturing of culture and to our own insatiable appetites, not simply to horrify us, but to make our hearts warm to the things we have lost in a way that will motivate us to find them again.
One of the best poems in the book is "The Common Life," in which Auden uses the concept of the living room to explore how humans in the modern age relate to one another. The living room becomes in the poem a "catholic" area for exploring a "secular faith"—the soul of the room reflects the soul of the one who keeps it. Individuals entering the room are "protestant" in their individuation—Auden invokes the philosophical categories of "I" and "Thou" to show how we find ourselves in opposition and how we mutually strive to overcome it.
Auden may have been the last true poet. As one of his later books, then, About the House may be one of the last true books of poetry.
July 5, 2024
As with all my ratings of poetry, this is about my enjoyment and understanding. I’m intrigued by Auden. I’ve read a few of his essays and like the way he thinks, which motivates me to pick up more of his poetry (maybe a collection from early in his career since I think this was one of his last).
Read
April 11, 2025I've encountered Auden in numerous anthologies, but this is the first time I've read a complete volume of his work. The first half is House-themed; the second is a sort of random selection. I found more to like in the first half: tales of entertaining, of houses, rooms, common life. It was really excellent, particularly "Tonight at seven-thirty" about a dinner party for six and "The cave of nakedness" about sleep.
He's inspirational, motivational and a wonderful poet.
I'll be reading more.
He's inspirational, motivational and a wonderful poet.
I'll be reading more.
May 3, 2020
Some interesting use of language, intriguing diction, and an unconventional set of topics (poems taking as their subject the various rooms of a domicile). But none of them engaged me the way certain poems of Auden's have as I've encountered them in anthologies.
July 6, 2022
wiersze z wczesnej fazy zawsze wydawały mi się dużo słabsze od późnego Audena
April 16, 2023
I’m. Sorry!
These just didn’t click for me.
The JFK one was interesting though.
🤷🏻♂️
These just didn’t click for me.
The JFK one was interesting though.
🤷🏻♂️
Read
January 6, 2010"...to stink of Poetry / is unbecoming, and never / to be dull shows a lack of taste."
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews