The Fredösphere

I can't stop blogging about Auden, because of his strange spiritual odyssey and, most importantly, because he and I share a common birthday (February 21, an especially fine time to be born).  Here's Edward Mendelson writing in the Introduction to W. H. Auden:  Selected Poems:

The most notorious aspect of Auden's revisions, as of his whole poetic theory, was his insistence that a poem must not be "dishonest," must not express beliefs that a poet does not actually hold, no matter how rhetorically effective he finds them.  In Auden's view, poetry could not be exempted from ethical standards of truth or falsehood:  a poem could be a lie, and what was more serious, a poetic lie could be more persuasive in the public realm than lies less eloquently expressed.

So, is this a hint that I'm going to set some Auden poetry to music?  Not anytime soon.  In fact, I've begun setting a poem written about a thousand years before that February day in 1907 that Auden arrived on the scene.  The poem has a devilishly difficult meter but which should produce an enormously fun piece if only I can find the right melody for it.  More, I cannot say; as usual, we must keep this little poetic discovery very hush-hush.