Tolkien’s lectures in Anglo-Saxon philology, and which clearly influences the poems of his early twenties. Its meter imitates medieval alliterative verse, which Auden had been drawn to as an undergraduate when he attended J. The poem is strange and oblique it pursues in a highly concentrated form many of Auden’s long-term fascinations. (“It’s frightfully long,” he told his friend Alan Ansen.) It would be interesting to know what fraction of those who begin reading it persist to the end. Auden’s last book-length poem, his longest poem, and almost certainly the least-read of his major works. In even this accidental and temporary community there arises the possibility of what Auden once called “local understanding.” Certain anxieties may be overcome not by the altering of geopolitical conditions but by the cultivation of mutual sympathy - perhaps mutual love even among those who hours before had been strangers. The Age of Anxiety begins in fear and doubt, but the four protagonists find some comfort in sharing their distress.
but hey, while I’m handing out excerpts, how about one more? This is from my Introduction to the poem: Auden’s long poem The Age of Anxiety will be out later this year, I hope, though it hasn’t shown up on Amazon yet.