Funeral Blues – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of W. H. Auden’s ‘Stop All the Clocks’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

W. H. Auden’s poem ‘Stop all the clocks’ – poem number IX in his Twelve Songs, and also sometimes known as ‘Funeral Blues’ – is a poem so famous and universally understood that perhaps it is unnecessary to offer much in the way of textual analysis.

Yet we’re going to offer some notes towards an analysis of ‘Funeral Blues’ in this post, because if a poem does touch us and move us in some way – especially so many of us – it’s always worth trying to explain why.

10 Classic W. H. Auden Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) wrote a great deal of poetry, with many of the best Auden poems being written in the 1930s. In this post, we’ve taken on the difficult task of finding the ten greatest Auden poems – difficult because, although certain poems naturally rise to the surface and proclaim their greatness, there are quite a few of those.

Here’s our top ten. Are there any classic poems by Auden that we’ve left off the list? Follow the title of each poem to read it.