Wisdom in SpaceSome writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
-- W. H. Auden
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #WHAuden #Authenticity #Originality #Writing
Know ThyselfThe Uncertainty Of It All, Heisenberg You Were Right
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Urdu Gulli
(I know friends are already suspecting
Since I was in 9th class
That I steal lines or wholesale,
So let me confess those two lines
Are mods of WH Auden’s poem
Not telling which poem
Do some homework).
Returning from Minerva Coffee Shop
After Hot and Sour Soup
And Grilled Cheese Sandwich
With a few chips as garnishment
Waiters nowadays have become very caring
He asked me if I wanted more helping of chips
I smiled and pointed to my belly
He gave a hearty chuckle
This young guy who is in far better health
Of the body, not finances,
I ask him to get the bill,
And then maître d’hôtel walks up to me
And asks “Tea?”
I say why not, and he who sees me
At the coffee shop, alone, often,
I know him better than he does me
He only knows that I take tea in the end
I know how much he earns,
How long he has been working here
How old he is
He is still unmarried, etc.
Now you are wondering,
Where is the uncertainty in this all buddy
All too predictable—the cheese sandwich—
You who are not exactly slim,
I start to protest I was once and stop
Realizing I have to justify the title,
Ok, read the last stanza.
As I walked out one evening,
Walking back down Urdu Gulli,
I stepped on a banana peel
With a little bit of its pulp inside
I almost fall, and let out
A mild gasp, either Oh My
Or Oh God, must have been Oh God
Because God is very much on my mind
For too long now, in fact so long
I keep remembering Samuel Beckett’s play
Not telling which play, look up
Do your homework, my God you guys are lazy
See how God has made his appearance again
But I digress, and upon hearing My God
The male of the couple behind me
Asked, “What happened Sir?”
By the time I look up
I find the girl/woman (his girlfriend or wife?)
Ahead of him by a few meters
He has lagged behind
Does that happen these days
The women outpacing we men
Anyway, I digress again,
So I point to the banana peel
And shrug and say,
“Can’t even sue anyone”
He gives a chuckle
Perhaps wondering
Suing? What’s going on?
And I add, maybe there’s a CC TV camera
He says unnecessarily, “Evidence”
And wanting to have the last word
I say, ‘Yeah, the smokin’ gun”,
And walk back to my apartment
“Shaken and stirred” (sorry, Bond).
Los cuadernos de ViecoPoética. W. H. Auden
Bienaventuradas las reglas de la métrica
que anulan las respuestas automáticas,
nos fuerzan a pensar dos veces
y nos liberan de los grilletes del Yo.
W. H. Auden
#WHAuden
Tucker TeagueAn excellent bio piece on the poet, W.H. Auden.
Stop All the Clocks - WH Auden in an Age of Anxiety (BBC)
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
-- W. H. Auden
⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #WHAuden #Education #Professors
⬇ #Photography #Panorama #LakePowell #SlickRock #Canyon #Utah
Auden in Austria DigitalIf you are in Vienna this forthcoming Tuesday, join us at #ViennaCityLibrary #Wienbibliothek for some (German-language) glimpse into the editors' workshop:
#AustrianAuden #DigitalEdition #DigitalHumanities #DSE #SDE #WHAuden #Auden
WIST QuotationsThose who will not reason
Perish in the act:
Those who will not act
Perish for that reason.
Perish in the act:
Those who will not act
Perish for that reason.
W. H. Auden (1907-1973) Anglo-American poet [Wystan Hugh Auden]
“Shorts,” No. 7 (c. 1930), Collected Poems, Part 2 “1927-1932” (1976 ed.) [ed. Mendelson]
More about this quote: wist.info/auden-w-h/26031/
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #whauden #auden #action #danger #deed #hesitation #hesitancy #inaction #indecision #irrationality #paralysis #passive #reason #reflex #thoughtlessness #unreason #whimsy
Denis 🌏Came across this, from a poem by W. H. Auden (from a book @ZaneSelvans recommended that I just got out of the library)
I love this so much:
From Letter to Elizabeth Mayer: (January 1, 1940) [published in The Atlantic 1941]
How hard it is to set aside
Terror, concupiscence and pride,
Learn who and where and how we are,
The children of a modest star,
Frail, backward, clinging to the granite
Skirts of a sensible old planet,
Our placid and suburban nurse
In Sitter’s swelling universe,
How hard to stretch imagination
To live according to our station.
W. H. Auden
Levka#RefugeeBlues #WHAuden #déjà_vu #poetry
Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.
Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.
In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.
The consul banged the table and said,
"If you've got no passport you're officially dead":
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.
Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?
Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
"If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread":
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.
Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die":
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.
Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.
Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.
Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.
Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.
Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist.... This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own.
-- W. H. Auden
