In Praise of Limestone

In the Strada Nomentana, Richard Wilson.

"In Praise of Limestone" is a poem written by W. H. Auden in Italy in May 1948. Central to his canon and one of Auden's finest poems,[1] it has been the subject of diverse scholarly interpretations. Auden's limestone landscape has been interpreted as an allegory of Mediterranean civilization and of the human body. The poem, sui generis,[2] is not easily classified. As a topographical poem, it describes a landscape and infuses it with meaning. It has been called the "first … postmodern pastoral."[3] In a letter, Auden wrote of limestone and the poem's theme that "that rock creates the only human landscape."[4]

First published in Horizon in July 1948, the poem then appeared in his important 1951 collection Nones. A revised version was published beginning in 1958,[5] and is prominently placed in the last chronological section of Auden's Collected Shorter Poems, 1922–1957 (1966).

  1. ^ Hecht, Anthony (1979). "On W.H. Auden's 'In Praise of Limestone'". New England Review. 2 (1): 65–84.
  2. ^ Price Parkin, Rebecca (Autumn 1965). "The Facsimile of Immediacy in W. H. Auden's 'In Praise of Limestone'". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 7 (3): 295–304.
  3. ^ Emig, Rainer (May 2002). "Lust in the ground: the erotics and politics of soil in contemporary poetry". Critical Survey. 14 (2): 37–49. doi:10.3167/001115702782352114.
  4. ^ Mendelson (1999), p. 290.
  5. ^ Auden, W. H. (1995). Bucknell, Katherine; Jenkins, Nicholas (eds.). 'In Solitude, for Company': W.H. Auden After 1940 : Unpublished Prose and Recent Criticism. Auden Studies. Oxford University Press. p. 245. ISBN 0-19-818294-5.