Auden's unauthorized annotations

"The thing one gets tired of - they may be quite good - is the old warhorses, things you find in anthologies and refuse to read."*

on this island

Auden also tended to break one of the cardinal laws of library usage: he wrote in his library books. In this particular case, the Swarthmore College Libraries were fortunate in that the renegade reader usually wrote in his own books, like the copy of On this Island that he consulted while compiling a collection of his poetry.

on this island
This poem (view entire page) elicited the exasperated response "O God, what rubbish" from its author.

*From a question-and-answer session with visiting professor Brendan Kennelly's class (1971), transcribed in the College Bulletin (May 1972): "The thing one gets tired of - they may be quite good - is the old warhorses, things you find in anthologies and refuse to read."

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