Your fabulous face - Wh Auden. Photograph: Jane Bown.
While anniversaries continue to flood the world of classical music, to the extent that the anniversary of enough being distinctly enough is probably well overdue, the world of books seems to be slipping behind. Seldom eschewing a ride on the birthday bandwagon, it seems that the literary establishment is quietly ignoring the imminent centenary of WH Auden, which is less than three weeks away. Either that, or it's a surprise party.
It is possible the Auden blackout comes from those who remember the poet as one irked, albeit politely, by displays of affection, or from conscientious readers of The More Loving One, worried about upsetting the balance in "If equal affection cannot be / Let the more loving one be me". But some, at any rate, think that if Betjeman was deserving of last year's centennial overexposure, then Auden is due something of a birthday bash. After all, the second Mr WH is, as a poet, of considerably more influence and importance than Betjeman, despite the latter's several and genuine merits.
As the great man's birthday approaches, the rumbling mounts. The novelist Duncan Fallowell complains, in his First Post column, that some allegedly vague plans on the part of Faber to revise the Collected Poems are simply not enough for the man who was, as Fallowell reminds us, the greatest English poet of the twentieth century. The Grumpy Old Bookman puts this comparative lack of publishing interest down to the difference in "seriousness" of Betjeman and Auden, whereas Susan Hill blames the fact that "alas" Auden "has no family to root for him". She announces herself available for hire to recite "As I Walked Out One Evening".
Perhaps Auden is one of the very few poets who has no need of a birthday publication bonanza. Not only is his place at the centre of our literary culture in no doubt, but the appearance of one of his poems at a rather moving moment in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral has given him a popular profile most poets would kill for.
