Sunday book pick: The poems in WH Auden’s ‘Another Time’ flaunt his talents as a storyteller

WH Auden (1907–1973) was a British-American poet whose first collection of poetry Poems was published by TS Eliot, the master himself, for Faber and Faber in 1930. Ten years later, Auden published his collection Another Time which was the first book following his departure to America from England. In 2019, Faber and Faber released the 90th-anniversary edition of the book which contains his wider body of work including some of his most well-known and oft-quoted poems.

Life leaks away

The fact that Auden’s poetry speaks to us almost a hundred years since it was first published is a testament to how he perfected his style and technique and engaged with the politics, faith, and morals of his time. Besides his most visible poems – for instance, “Funeral Blues” and “Epitaph on a Tyrant” – the collection also has some of Auden’s early and lesser-known works. The book is divided into three sections – People and Places, Lighter Poems, and Occasional Poems – and what remains constant in Auden through the ages is his commitment to viewing the most ordinary human experience with the devotion of someone witnessing a miracle.

Take, for example,

“And Time with us was always popular.
When have we not preferred some going round
To going straight to where we are?”

Or,

“In headaches and...

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