Poetry is not magic. In so far as poetry, or any other of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.

—W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (Vintage Books/Random House, 1989)

never finished

A poem is never finished: it's always an accident that puts a stop to it--i.e., gives it to the public.

—Paul Valéry, "Littérature," Œuvres II (1960).

(W.H. Auden altered this statement to “Poems are never finished; they are abandoned.”)

two cheeses

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

—G. K. Chesterton


A poet's hope: to be,
like some valley cheese,
local, but prized elsewhere.

—W.H. Auden, "Shorts II"

love, war and wit

Auden had three of the qualities that make poets immortal. He wrote beautifully about love, movingly about war, and he was witty.

—Christopher Hitchens, “The essential Auden,” Los Angeles Times (March 04, 2007)

live and/or die

Famous controversial revision: W.H. Auden changed the last line of his poem "September 1, 1939," from "We must love one another or die" to "We must love one another and die."

proper names

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

—W.H. Auden, A Certain World, 1970