The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

(From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._H._Auden)

Wystan Hugh Auden (/ˈwɪstən ˈhjuː ˈɔːdən/;[1] 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973), who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,[2][3] born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.[4] His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content.[5][6] The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.

Auden grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class family and read English literature at Christ Church, Oxford. His early poems, written in the late 1920s and early 1930s, alternated between telegraphic modern styles and fluent traditional ones, were written in an intense and dramatic tone, and established his reputation as a left-wing political poet and prophet. He became uncomfortable in this role in the later 1930s, and abandoned it after he moved to the United States in 1939, where he became an American citizen in 1946. His poems in the 1940s explored religious and ethical themes in a less dramatic manner than his earlier works, but still combined traditional forms and styles with new forms devised by Auden himself. In the 1950s and 1960s many of his poems focused on the ways in which words revealed and concealed emotions, and he took a particular interest in writing opera librettos, a form ideally suited to direct expression of strong feelings.[7]

He was also a prolific writer of prose essays and reviews on literary, political, psychological and religious subjects, and he worked at various times on documentary films, poetic plays and other forms of performance. Throughout his career he was both controversial and influential. After his death, some of his poems, notably "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks"), "Musée des Beaux Arts", "Refugee Blues", "The Unknown Citizen", and "September 1, 1939", became known to a much wider public than during his lifetime through films, broadcasts, and popular media.[4]

W.H. Auden reads The More Loving One

Headboards_April26_2022d_2

Here you can listen to Derek Walcott's poem recited by Kabat-Zinn, saying a prose statement was "bound to be inadequate" in communicating his point.

Read the full poem at http://www.onbeing.org/program/opening-our-lives/138

"Love After Love" by Derek Walcott (Read by Jon Kabat-Zinn)

Sylvia Plath reads her poem "The Disquieting Muses" – background and full text here: http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/27/sylvia-plath-reads-the-disquieting-muses-bbc/

MORE / TEXT

The Disquieting Muses

Annotations and transcribed highlights: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/16/neil-gaiman-how-stories-last

Recorded at the Long Now Foundation (http://longnow.org/) on June 9, 2015. 

Follow @https://soundcloud.com/longnow and subscribe to the podcast of their excellent seminars on long-term thinking on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/seminars-about-long-term-thinking/id186908455?mt=2

MORE / TRANSCRIPT

Neil Gaiman on how stories last

Background and poem text: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/27/sylvia-plath-reads-spinster/

CONTEXT / POEM TEXT

Sylvia Plath reads "Spinster"

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro talks to Anne McElvoy about his latest book – The Buried Giant. And as two separate productions of Sophocles’ tragedy, Antigone, are performed on stage in London – the playwright Roy Williams and the Greek scholar and translator, Oliver Taplin assess the enduring appeal of the play. Published on March 5, 2015.

Free Thinking - Kazuo Ishiguro

Celebrating the legacy of Vladimir Nabokov at the 20th Century Masters Tribute Series, James Mason open the PEN America event by reading the iconic opening lines of Lolita.

Opening Lines Of Lolita, Read By James Mason

Sixth Form students, Simran and Kimjeet travel to King’s College London to interview Eleanor Knox. Simran and Kimjeet are hoping to study Law or Psychology somewhere in London, but after talking to Eleanor, they question whether to study something vocational rather than what they are passionate about. They also discover the connection between Physics and Philosophy and some of the weirder parts of Eleanor’s work which studies some of the deepest, longest, most complex puzzles in our world.

Unitalks

E04 | The Matrix and the Manifest Image | Dr Eleanor Knox

John Berryman reading at the Guggenheim on Halloween, 1963. This was the first public reading of the Dream Song Cycle. 

Dream Song 29 [There Sat Down, Once, A Thing On Henry's Heart]
October 31, 1963

Academy Of American Poets Reading With Robert Lowell

John Berryman: "Dream Song 29"

"A unique tool for students interested in university" 

The IAI are delighted to be working with The Brilliant Club and Kings College London to bring you UniTalks, a brand new podcast which unlocks access to university for the next generation of big thinkers – answering all of the challenges of applying for, and studying at, the world’s leading universities, above and beyond the A-level curriculum.

Listen to sixth-formers interrogate the UK’s pre-eminent lecturers and professors, unlocking cutting-edge research across the humanities and sciences that will shape how we think in years to come.

E04 | The Matrix and the Manifest Image | Dr Eleanor Knox

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