W.H. Auden
W.H. Auden
77 St. Marks PlaceNew York, NY 10003
There is a plaque here that marks the residence of English-born poet, Wystan Hugh Auden, an East Villager from 1953 to 1972, a year before he died. Take a dip into a line from his poem “As I Walked Out One Evening“…that struck us as rather fitting for our own endeavor…
As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat.
Though best known for this elegant and tragic meditation on the nature of time, he published more than 400 poems during his lifetime, and also wrote many essays and reviews. Interestingly, the basement of the building where he lived once housed Russian left-wing newspaper Novy Mir, where Leon Trotsky spent time working in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution.