1 - Introduction

Summary

'Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best: “memorable speech”', W. H. Auden wrote in the Introduction to his 1935 anthology, The Poet's Tongue (Poet's Tongue, p. v). Auden is one of the few modern poets whose words inhabit the popular memory. Long before the recitation of 'Funeral Blues' in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, many of his phrases had passed into common use. His characterisation in 'September 1, 1939' of the 1930s as a 'low dishonest decade' has become definitive and ubiquitous, invoked even in quarters not normally associated with high literacy. Dan Quayle, for example, announcing his 1999 Presidential candidacy, applied it to the Clinton years. This poem alone has supplied titles for countless books, including studies of the economic origins of World War II (A Low Dishonest Decade), Soviet espionage (The Haunted Wood), the history of saloons (Faces Along the Bar) and a play about AIDS (The Normal Heart). Such diverse co-options indicate the range of reference Auden can pack into a single poem.