“Let us honour if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.”
W. H. Auden book Poems
Dedication to Christopher Isherwood, Poems (1930)
Quotes from bookPoems
Poems is the title of three separate collections of the early poetry of W. H. Auden. Auden refused to title his early work because he wanted the reader to confront the poetry itself. Consequently, his first book was called simply Poems when it was printed by his friend and fellow poet Stephen Spender in 1928; he used the same title for the very different book published by Faber and Faber in 1930 , and by Random House in 1934, which also included The Orators and The Dance of Death.
