The Murmur of Underground Streams
ENJOYED W. H. Auden’s readings of his poems immensely, (Pedantry constrains me to suggest to the announcer that Auden rhymes with Gordon, not with Bowdon.) I did not have his poems by me, which were untitled till after the reading, and could therefore get no help from the extra layer of understanding which the eye would offer. But the poet’s delivery is so lucid, so artfully flat and dead-pan, so leaden with the letter, though never the spirit, of his memorandum, so clerkly and matter-of-fact, that such striking phrases as "a rapture of distress" or the one at the head of this paragraph, gained a sudden telling weight, like a plain major chord in a welter of scurrying minors. His manner is the reverse of lyrical, but it is never weary, as Eliot’s can be; in his delivery, the poems had an air at once sardonic and simple, impossible to describe. It can only be appreciated by hearing the poems themselves. But above all, the poems have the flash, not of a warming
fire, but of a diamond-hard brilliance. Auden seems an extraordinarily lucid and clear-headed poet.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570621.2.34.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 932, 21 June 1957, Page 20
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192The Murmur of Underground Streams New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 932, 21 June 1957, Page 20
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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