Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden

The poet who most fascinated and infuriated Randall Jarrell was W.

H. Auden. While an affectionate and admiring reader of Auden, Jarrell does not avoid identifying his poetic failures and political excesses.

Jarrell's witty, pointed, and controversial lectures trace the evolution of Auden's style from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and examine the ideas and contexts that animated his poetry, including psychoanalysis, leftist politics, and Christian theology.

Delivered at Princeton University in 1952, these six lectures offer new insights into Auden's poetry, particularly his long poems, and Jarrell's own work as critic and poet.