From "W.H. Auden's "For the Time Being"
The Daily Poem
Goldberry Studios
4.6 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2021
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
Wystan Hugh Auden (/ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən/; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973[1]) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".[2][3][4]
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Daily Poem. I'm David Kern and today is Wednesday, December 15th, |
| 0:06.0 | 2021. We are 10 days from Christmas, so once again I'll share with you an Advent-themed poem. |
| 0:13.0 | What I'm about to read is by W.H. Auden. He was a British American poet who lived from 1907 to |
| 0:20.0 | 1973, certainly one of my favorite poets, |
| 0:23.1 | and thus one you've heard on this podcast a few times. |
| 0:27.0 | He's famous for such poems as The Shield of Achilles and September 1, 1939, |
| 0:33.1 | and certainly the poem that I'm going to read today called For the Time Being. |
| 0:38.0 | Now, I'm only going to read a section of this. |
| 0:40.0 | For the Time Being is quite a long poem, and so it wouldn't really fit on this podcast |
| 0:43.6 | unless I just read it every day until Christmas, probably. |
| 0:46.7 | And I want to read it because I was reminded of it in the newsletter of Alan Jacobs. |
| 0:52.9 | His newsletter is called Snakes and Ladders, and it's consistently |
| 0:55.7 | great. You should sign up for that. I think you can just Google Alan Jacobs, snakes and ladders, |
| 1:00.4 | and you'll find that. It's published through Comment Magazine. And he shared this last Monday |
| 1:06.1 | on December 6th. I've been saving it for today. And he posted a brief excerpt from, for the time being, |
| 1:14.5 | a Christmas oratorio, which again is a quite long poem by Aden. And he notes in his email that |
| 1:20.4 | this is a poem written in time of global war, which begins with an Advent section, |
| 1:24.8 | including this meditation. So I'll read these lines and then share a few comments that Alan Jacobs made, |
| 1:31.7 | and then remind you again to subscribe to that and then read it again. |
| 1:35.8 | So here is a selection of lines from for the time being by W.H. Auden. |
| 1:49.2 | If, on account of the political situation, there are quite a number of homes without roofs and men lying about in the countryside, neither drunk nor asleep, if all |
| 1:56.3 | sailings have been cancelled till further notice, if it's unwise now to say much in letters, |
... |
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