Collected Poems of W.H. Auden by W.H. Auden
Published 1976 · 35,057 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Poetry, Modernist Poetry
How hard is Collected Poems of W.H. Auden to read?
Collected Poems of W.H. Auden scores 48 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Auden draws on a vast vocabulary — scientific, theological, colloquial, archaic — with omnivorous delight. His range of reference is one of his signatures.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Formally complex — elaborate stanza forms, intricate rhyme schemes — but the syntax within them is often conversational and clear. Auden makes difficulty sound easy.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Auden is an intellectual poet who thinks in verse, but he grounds his ideas in concrete situations, landscapes, and human relationships.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- The early poems are compressed and elliptical. The later poems are more discursive. Across the career, the density varies by period and form.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Auden is generally direct in his address, though the early poems cultivate a deliberate mysteriousness. The later work is candidly discursive.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- Auden uses symbolism selectively — the limestone landscape, the shield of Achilles, the canonical hours — but is not a systematically symbolic poet.
- Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
- Auden's irony is one of his defining qualities — a civilized, self-aware humor that qualifies his statements without undermining his seriousness.
- Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
- Auden's poems typically arrive at clear statements, though he often complicates them with qualifications. The exclusion of certain poems is itself a form of revision toward resolution.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- A large collected edition spanning four decades. The formal variety is exceptional — every poem has a distinct structure suited to its subject.
How Collected Poems of W.H. Auden is regarded
Collected Poems of W.H. Auden holds a literary regard score of 91 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.