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The Sea and the Mirror is the most brilliant and unsettling of the four long poems Auden composed during his furiously industrious first decade in America ... an intriguing mixture of the theatrical and the poetic... [It] represents his most determined and considered attempt to 'grow up,' but it moves most by its failure to do so. -- Mark Ford New York Review of Books [An] excellent and beautifully produced edition... The Sea and the Mirror has ambitions far above those which the modest label of 'A commentary' might suggest, and it attempts to clarify an entire aesthetic, both for the poet himself and (on a more abstract level) for all poetry and art in its relation to reality. Nor was this a question of aesthetics only, for Auden was determined that this work should offer a distinctively Christian philosophy of art, one which could announce, and validate, an entirely new depth and seriousness to his own life and writing. -- Peter McDonald Times Literary Supplement Even for those of us whose minds aren't particularly philosophical, The Sea and the Mirror can appeal through its language alone: It contains some of the poet's most accomplished verse, at once pellucid and delicately musical... [R]ead The Sea and the Mirror--you will return to it, as with Auden's other poetry, all your life. You can find the text in various Auden collections, but you'll never regret investing in this handsome edition of these tender, heartbroken poems. -- Michael Dirda Washington Post Book World

The Sea and the Mirror is the most brilliant and unsettling of the four long poems Auden composed during his furiously industrious first decade in America ... an intriguing mixture of the theatrical and the poetic... [It] represents his most determined and considered attempt to 'grow up,' but it moves most by its failure to do so. -- Mark Ford, New York Review of Books [An] excellent and beautifully produced edition... The Sea and the Mirror has ambitions far above those which the modest label of 'A commentary' might suggest, and it attempts to clarify an entire aesthetic, both for the poet himself and (on a more abstract level) for all poetry and art in its relation to reality. Nor was this a question of aesthetics only, for Auden was determined that this work should offer a distinctively Christian philosophy of art, one which could announce, and validate, an entirely new depth and seriousness to his own life and writing. -- Peter McDonald, Times Literary Supplement Even for those of us whose minds aren't particularly philosophical, The Sea and the Mirror can appeal through its language alone: It contains some of the poet's most accomplished verse, at once pellucid and delicately musical... [R]ead The Sea and the Mirror--you will return to it, as with Auden's other poetry, all your life. You can find the text in various Auden collections, but you'll never regret investing in this handsome edition of these tender, heartbroken poems. -- Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

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Arthur Kirsch, Alice Griffin Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Virginia, is the editor of Auden's Lectures on Shakespeare (Princeton).

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