W.H. Auden at Work

W.H. Auden at Work: The Craft of Revision explores revision in the poetry of W.H. Auden, focusing on Auden’s early sonnet sequences, “A Voyage,” and “Sonnets from China.” It enumerates in great detail the substantial changes Auden made to those sequences over the course of thirty years. Auden’s observations are an amalgam of abstract philosophizing on the nature of humanity, its restlessness and tendency to create conflict, as well as a meticulous catalogue of sensory details garnered from his observations and interviews. Alexis Levitin and Joshua Kulseth place the original versions of the poems alongside their revisions, and thoroughly dissecting the changes which were wrought, commenting upon each in terms of grammar and syntax—leaving the narrativistic changes relatively untouched.