I don’t generally believe in adding footnotes to my poems, but this one might be incomprehensible to some people without an explanation.
For the past few months the National Theatre in London has been very successfully presenting a play by Alan Bennett, called The Habit of Art. This imagines a meeting between W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten towards the end of their careers. Since it is by Bennett, it contains many good jokes, but I feel it does the poet a disservice.
Originally, I gather, the play was to have been a straight confrontation between the two men. Apparently the bosses at the National didn’t think this worked, so changes were made, to show Britten and Auden as characters in a play within the play. This allowed a lot more joking at the expense of Auden, who in his old age became repetitive, forgetful, and, according to Oxford gossip, smelly. Read the rest of this entry »