"When he discusses the Welsh poet and artist David Jones’s maddeningly difficult poem The Anathemata, another epic work he admired enormously, Auden is honest enough, amid a detailed analysis, to remark of one section, “I am not sure what this is about. The Norse Invasions?” Nobody else is sure either, as it happens, but I cannot recall any critic, and certainly not one of Auden’s authority, making such a candid admission of bafflement, and it is refreshing." Eric Ormsby • The Wall Street Journal

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