Dyer’s Hand ~ W.H. Auden

Books like this are scarce; there are not many books that grow with me over the years. I have used over a month to reread it again and enjoyed every moment of it.

Having said that, I immediately admit I have not read every essay. There are limits to what I want to know about Shakespeare. He is not a part of my cultural background; there are boundaries a non-native speaker of the English language can never cross.

Best parts of this collection for me are the essays that are not essays anymore, just the best sentences or thoughts out of a larger corpus of articles. Where Auden gets an almost aphoristic quality and reading just one or two of his ideas can be enough food for thought for a day.

Above all, he has such clarifying views on art.