{"product_id":"2026200013926-secondhand-collected-shorter-poems-1927-1957","title":"Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Fair\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew poets of the twentieth century shaped the English language with such restless brilliance as W. H. Auden, and Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957 stands as the definitive testament to three decades of his extraordinary creative vision. Spanning thirty years of composition, this landmark anthology chronicles Auden's poetic journey from his early, politically charged verse of the late 1920s — marked by a generation's anxiety between two world wars — through to the luminous, metaphysically rich meditations of the 1950s. Each poem, carefully selected and in many cases revised by Auden himself, presents a panoramic portrait of mid-century intellectual and emotional life, rendered in language by turns incisive, tender, comic, and profoundly humane.\n\nAuden's singular genius lies in his ability to marry high literary tradition with the vernacular rhythms of everyday speech, producing verse that is simultaneously accessible and architecturally intricate. Collected Shorter Poems illustrates his mastery across an astonishing range of forms — the lyric, the sonnet, the ballad, the ode — each deployed with surgical precision to illuminate themes of love, mortality, political responsibility, and the nature of art itself. Published by Faber and Faber, the collection cements Auden's reputation as one of the most intellectually adventurous poets writing in English, and the poet's own editorial hand in shaping this volume raises compelling questions about memory, artistic identity, and what a poet chooses to leave behind.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49160978596059,"sku":"2026200013926-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/780a2b1e-4ad9-442c-9525-36bf96ca1076.png?v=1787188543","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200013926-secondhand-collected-shorter-poems-1927-1957","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}