Great Regulars: The English poet W.H. Auden arrived

in New York in January 1939. He was 32 and internationally famous. America was all but unknown to him, yet he took to it eagerly and steadfastly, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1946. Though he would always travel widely, New York remained his base until shortly before his death, in 1973. America had a transforming influence on Auden's poetry, and he--in his role as teacher, essayist and leader of an informal, brilliant, drifting, often boozy literary salon--had a transforming effect on American poetry. The interlocking ways in which a vast country shaped an individual poet, even as he shaped its contentious, loosely confederated poets, is the subject of Aidan Wasley's "The Age of Auden."

from Brad Leithauser: The Wall Street Journal: Keeper of the Affirming Flame

~~~~~~~~~~~