The Letter

Question 1

When was The Letter written?

Answer 1

1928

Question 2

How many syllables does Auden strictly use in the second stanza?

Answer 2

8

Question 3

how many syllables does Auden strictly use in the first stanza of The Letter?

Answer 3

9

Question 4

“I, decent with the ___, move//Different or with a different love”

Answer 4

season

Question 5

“If love not seldom has received//An unjust answer, was ___”

Answer 5

deceived

Question 6

“Your ___ comes, speaking as you,//Speaking of much , but not to come”

Answer 6

letter

Question 7

“Thought warmed to ___ through and through”

Answer 7

evening

Question 8

“Shall see, shall pass, as we have ____”

Answer 8

seen

Question 9

“Love’s worn ___ re-begun”

Answer 9

circuit

Question 10

“Cry out against the storm, and found//The year’s ___ a completed round’

Answer 10

arc

Question 11

summarise it

Answer 11

Auden takes you through the life of a love affair, using seasonal references in order to do that, collapsing the beginning middle and end fo the relationship into one moment as though it’s a time lapse

Question 12

what do stanza divisions show

Answer 12

his acceptance of the devastating past that forces him to move on

Question 13

what form ?

Answer 13

gnomic, riddle

Question 14

‘new valley’

Answer 14

new relationship; valleys associated with fertility

Question 15

‘frown’

Answer 15

initially because of the sun however later it is overpowering

Question 16

‘you certainly remain’

Answer 16

three emphatics; the lover is a thing that seems to be definitively constant

Question 17

‘sudden bird’

Answer 17

he projects himself onto it, exposure, isolation and loneliness; he wants to cry out against the ‘storm’ of his relationship

Question 18

‘electric circuit’

Answer 18

no longer firing up as it used to

Question 19

‘preliminary shiver’

Answer 19

excitement, sexual trepidation

Question 20

‘solitary truck’

Answer 20

n longer has an engine or any momentum, like the old love. sexual innuendo of shunted? worn out of love

Question 21

‘Speaking of much but not to come

//

Nor speech is close nor fingers dumb’

Answer 21

couplet is broken in the middle to further stress relationship is done

Question 22

‘country god’

Answer 22

Pan - idea of chasing love, stone statue however with its ‘stone smile’ and ‘reticence’ is chilling? priapic?

Question 23

tone

Answer 23

heartbreak, depressing

Question 24

diction centred around connotations of ______ coping with emotion|L ‘shunting’ ‘decent’

Answer 24

progression

Question 25

highly ____ syntax, requires you to fill in the gaps of words that have been occluded, Auden’s veiled speech

Answer 25

compressed

Question 26

In what ways is it veiled?

Answer 26

a letter comes speaking of much but ‘not to come’ and yet we’re given no content to it, so its content and promises are withheld

Question 27

How is intimacy established?

Answer 27

his use of ‘you’ which suggests an implied, shared knowledge that the poem does not openly declare and doesn’t specify but rather remains reticent about

Question 28

what does the intimacy do?

Answer 28

invite us into the reticence.

Question 29

What could you compare it to?

Answer 29

Marianne Moore’s investment in “Restraint”, very closely related in its moral valences

Question 30

what are Auden’s intentions in this poem?

Answer 30

to master his intentions as a speaker, to say what he means and he wants us to be able to grasp that

Question 31

honesty

Answer 31

poetry as asphere of moral action in which truth is always at stake, where the poet’s specific office is to control and use language in a kind of responsible and honest way, He wants to be honest.

Question 32

who is the poem dedicated to?

Answer 32

a man called William McElwee who was heterosexual and wasn’t interested in Auden