W.H. Auden - Epitaph on a Tyrant

Among my poetic musings are updates about a semi-regular gathering of friends, a salon if you will, or simply a discussion if “salon” seems too precious. The most successful of our poetry gatherings follows a simple format; someone reads the poem under discussion and everyone in turn comments on the poem in whatever way they like. Sometimes, the comment explores the poem’s content, with some attempt to paraphrase a section. Sometimes, one of us will want to explore poetic tropes: rhythm, rhyme, form. Often, someone will simply share a turn of phrase that speaks most powerfully to them.

In all of our recent meetings, we’ve focused on no more than two poems, circulating the text in advance, and in all that time, we’ve only had one poem that we circulated, but didn’t find the time to discuss: W.H. Auden’s “Epitaph on a Tyrant.” I thought it would be interesting if for the Auden poem we shared our comments online.

For those of you relatively new to Substack (which actually includes me, so let me know if anything I say about the process doesn’t actually play out that way), there’s a place at the end of this post where you can comment. Others can then respond to your comment or begin a new thread. So, let me get out of the way. Here’s Auden’s poem, followed by a comment box. Come back again if you want to a.) see what others have said and b.) continue the conversation.

Epitaph on a Tyrant - W.H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.