#whauden

“Wise-eyed Alan Ansen, Polymath expatriate & eccentric, at San Sammuelle motorscaffe station, half-street from his apartment 3219 della Carrozza where Peter Orlovsky & I spent happy summer 1957- Ansen also hosted Wm. Burroughs & Gregory Corso. Harvard Classics summa cum laude 1942, Poet, critic, he was secretary & Prosodic Conscience to W.H. Auden during early 40’s Age of Anxiety, thereafter lifelong intimate of Auden & companion Chester Kallman-- as with William Burroughs whose Naked Lunch & later ravings he helped type & edit in Tangier 1957 & 1961. A familiar at San Remo village bar & Kerouac's companions' revels in late 1940's, he's sketched as "Rollo Grab" in On the Road, "Ronald Swenson" in Visons of Cody and Book of Dreams, "Austin Bromberg" in The Subterraneans & Amadeus Baroque, Doctor Sax. His own formally complete versification displayed in Contact Highs: Selected Poems, 1957-1987 (Dalkey Archive Press) He lives in Athens now, 1995 - this was Venice July 1957 - Allen Ginsberg.”

W. H. Auden

Poetry is: hard to define! I liked this quote though. . How are you guys all on this Easter Saturday? In Australia it’s a four-day weekend ... unless you’re a self-employed calligrapher, in which case it’s just the same as any other weekend 😂 this afternoon I’m planning to build a cat palace out of the cardboard boxes that keep building up in my study, because we know how to party in this house 🎊 🎉😅 what about you? . . . #timelapse #calligraphy #poetry #whauden #whaudenpoem #satisfying #copperplate #melbournecalligraphy #melbournecalligrapher #traditionalcalligraphy #oldschool #handlettering #handwriting #cursive #beautifulwriting #learncalligraphy #snailmail #write #love #lovemyjob #handtype #goodtype #calligraphymasters (at Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)

In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark And the living nations wait Each sequestered in its hate Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. ~W H Auden #aesthetic #quote #quotes #poem #whauden #night #sky

“He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.” – Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973), “Funeral Blues” . Picture: W.H. Auden, London, United Kingdom, January 1938. Photo © @gettyimages. . W.H. Auden, who was born one hundred and ten years ago today, was a prolific English writer, playwright, essayist, and critic, best known for the approximately four hundred poems he published, which ranged in style from strict traditionalism to obscure modernism and in content from love (“Funeral Blues”) to sociopolitics (“September 1, 1939”) to psychology (“The Age of Anxiety”) to religion (“For the Time Being”). Auden is considered one of the great poets of the twentieth century. . Auden’s lifelong friendship, and intermittent sexual relationship, with Christopher Isherwood pushed both men in their creative and professional pursuits. In 1939, Isherwood and Auden left Britain for the United States (a move that widely was seen as a betrayal), and Auden’s reputation suffered. . Living in New York, Auden met the poet Chester Kallman, and the men entered a relationship that Auden referred to as a marriage. Kallman ultimately ended the sexual relationship because he refused to accept Auden’s insistence on monogamy; the two lived together as companions until Auden’s death. In the 1950s, Auden summarized his emotional life in a couplet: “If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me.” . W.H. Auden died of a heart attack on September 29, 1973; he was sixty-six. . The inclusion of Auden’s “Funeral Blues” in the 1994 film “Four Weddings and a Funeral” brought increased visibility to his work; moreover, the reading of the poem by a gay man (played by John Hannah) at his lover’s funeral in an otherwise traditional romantic comedy humanized a gay relationship at a key moment in gay history. #lgbthistory #HavePrideInHistory #WHAuden (at London, United Kingdom)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.