BATTLE OF THE BOOKS: Rick Brookhiser reignites the Eliot Wars–in this case, Eliot vs. Auden. He’s on the right side, but… what a weird title bout. I really love Auden. I love his surreal fleshcreepers. I love his journalistic ear for the clean, memorable, “why didn’t I think of that?” summary phrase (“human on my faithless arm,” “Children afraid of the dark/Who have never been happy or good,” probably most of the Auden you remember). I would love to see the New York Post with headlines by Auden. And there’s a First Things piece on Auden here that’s more than worth your time.

But honestly, do people really think he was better than Eliot? Eliot is a ferocious, ambivalent, wrecked and corroded and shifty poet, who can make any broken rhythm sing. Eliot is subjunctive where Auden is first-person present, tense and uncertain where Auden is alternately passionate and over-easy, sensual and concrete where Auden occasionally retreats into abstraction. Was it Harold Bloom who called Eliot and Milton the greatest poets of women’s hair?

(It’s a bit bizarre that, looking over that paragraph, I see that many of the flaws I find in my much-loved Auden are often attributed to Eliot. He has this weird schoolmistress reputation which I can only assume is due to his essays, or something. It’s certainly not warranted by that shattered and shattering, coiling and ensnaring poetry.)

Anyway, Brookhiser says this, with which I agree although I’d be a lot less harsh on Auden: “Eliot has an extremism of technique that marks him as a Yank, even when it manifests itself in his efforts to impersonate a donnish TLS contributor. Auden, when he lets his guard down, has a fussy cuteness which is found only among some Englishmen” (my emphasis of course).

In other Brookhiser poetry news, Emily Dickinson is quite obviously the best non-epic poet the Western world has yet produced, and Whitman and Emerson should have been muzzled at puberty. Thank you, come again.