STOP ALL THE CLOCKS

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone . . .

W. H. Auden was the consummate poet of love and heartbreak. Stop All the Clocks presents a selection of his best known, most lucid poems, poems that pitch human frailty against a persisting desire for love and belonging.

Here are the anxieties that beset our waking and sleeping hours: the delirium of desire, the torture of unrequited love, the trauma of loss and displacement. And here, in these resonant, dazzling poems, is the understanding we might be looking for.