Unser Auden ?
A nice point, or so it seems to me, is raised by the wording of the citation which this week announced the award of the Bollinger Poetry Prize to Mr. Wystan Auden. After describing him as " a tough thinker . . . who expresses himself acutely and with poetic vivacity," it goes on to say that " In his identity as •an American he has become a permanent part of American poetry." Well, has he ? If a poet changes his nationality (as Mr. Auden did in about 1941) does he, so to speak, take his poetry with him, or is the cultural heritage of his new motherland enriched only by what he writes as one of her citizens ? When in 1937 Mr. Auden was awarded the King's Gold Medal for Poetry (last week deservedly bestowed on Mr. Arthur Waley) we thought of him, and he thought of himself, as an English poet. Some of his poems appear in The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, which is predominantly English; others in The Oxford Book of American Verse. The whole business, though intensely unimportant, is undeniably confusing.
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