Why did Auden write Stop all the clocks?

Why did Auden write Stop all the clocks?

Curiously, ‘Stop All the Clocks’ began life as a piece of burlesque sending up blues lyrics of the 1930s: Auden originally wrote it for a play he was collaborating on with Christopher Isherwood, The Ascent of F6 (1936), which wasn’t entirely serious (although it was billed as a tragedy).

What is the message of Stop all the clocks?

W. H. Auden’s poem, “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” conveys the meaning of overwhelming grief, tragic loss, and an unrelenting pessimism best exemplified in the last lines, “For nothing now can ever come to any good.” The tone of the poem is that of a melancholy sadness enforced by the internal rhyme …

What is the message of Funeral Blues?

Death is the subject and main theme of “Funeral Blues.” Through the poem Auden makes a compelling statement about the devastating effects that the death of a loved one has on those left behind. The speaker has just lost someone for whom he/she had a deep love.

Is Stop all the clocks a metaphor?

Poems relay heavily on imagery and metaphors to help authors convey a certain image. As you have seen, “Stop All the Clocks” is a poem about grief caused by the loss of a loved one. Consequently, it is not surprising that the poet uses dark, gloomy imagery and metaphors suggesting decay.

What is the purpose of stopping the clocks in Funeral Blues?

… the mourners come. The poem begins with the speaker making a series of urgent requests. The speaker wants to stop “the clocks,” to turn off the “telephone”, to give the dog a “juicy bone” to keep it from barking, and to “silence the pianos.” Many of these requests are symbolic.

Who said Stop all the Clocks?

W H Auden
It featured in a 1938 anthology called The Year’s Poetry; and in the collection Another Time (1940), Auden included it, along with ‘Johnny’, ‘O Tell Me the Truth About Love’ and ‘Calypso’ under the heading ‘Four Cabaret Songs for Miss Hedli Anderson’….’Stop all the clocks’

What is the theme of poem Stop all the clocks cut off the telephone?

‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’, by W.H. Auden, appears to be a poem written from the perspective of someone mourning the loss of a lover who died. The poem calls for silence, but also an acknowledgement of a life lived. The poem artfully captures the themes of grief and loss.

What does the phrase He was my North my South My East My West mean?

The line ‘He was my North, my South, my East and West’ reflects the depth of his feeling and how much the man meant to him: since north, south, east, and west cover all four cardinal points of the compass, ‘He was my North, my South, my East and West’ is another way of saying, ‘he was my everything’ or ‘he was …

What is the rhyme scheme of Funeral Blues?

“Funeral Blues” is written in quatrains, and it does make use of iambic pentameter, but it’s highly irregular in its meter, with extra syllables here and wonky feet there. And the rhyme scheme is tweaked a bit, too: AABB instead of ABAB. Auden is using heroic couplets instead of alternating rhymes.

How is loss presented in Stop all the Clocks?

The speaker doesn’t want the world to keep going, to keep rushing forward: instead, the speaker wants the world to pause and reflect, to absorb the loss that the speaker is mourning. The reader can interpret the “clocks” as metonyms for time in general, but there’s also a more specific symbolic resonance.

What sort of poem is Stop all the Clocks?

‘Funeral Blues,’ also known as ‘Stop all the Clocks,’ is arguably Auden’s most famous poem. It was first published in ‘The Year’s Poetry’ in 1938. The poem is a morose, sad elegy that wonderfully describes the feelings associated with grieving.