One of my fellow graduate students, someone who gets me pretty well, keeps pointing out similarities in my writing to Auden. He’s right, of course. Today, he pointed out a similarity in one of my poems to an Auden poem I haven’t even read. He’s probably right about that, too. If all I am one day is a sixth-rate Auden, I will be a hell of a lot better than I am now.

All this is to say that, a few weeks ago, reading poetry aloud with friends, I was trying to find this poem online (I principally use my smartphone to search for poems I need to read to people) and couldn’t. Part of the reason it’s hard to find is I can never remember either the title or the first line – but also, I don’t think anyone has felt this poem needed to be absorbed by the Internet Cube yet. Until Me. So, here I am, putting it online (in the next post). For at least a year, it was my most of all favoritest, because of the structure of the lines. It reminds me of Song. It is not my favorite now, but I still have a lot of love for it. You kind of have to read it aloud to get the fullness of the awesome. Other Auden I used to love and now love less includes Victor: A Ballad (which I once officiously read aloud to a roomful of Alpha Delts) and The Dead Echo. Perhaps I shall onlineize them too. Some day.