“Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.”

British-American poet

Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet. Born in 1907 and active across much of the twentieth century, he is known for poetry that is formally skilled and wide-ranging in subject and tone. His work deals with politics, morality, love, religion, and the pressures of modern life. Among his best known poems are "Funeral Blues," "September 1, 1939," "The Shield of Achilles," The Age of Anxiety, "For the Time Being," and "Horae Canonicae."