New York City’s 92nd Street Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association, better know as the 92nd Street Y, is an iconic cultural and community center. Since opening in 1939, the 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center has played host to many of the world’s literary greats including T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore and Dylan Thomas.
The Poetry Center has always prided itself on providing students of all levels with the chance to work with the finest writers. In 1956 W.H. Auden taught a class on ‘Form and Style in Poetry’ and gave the enrolled students the following verse assignment.
As part of its 75th anniversary celebrations, the Unterberg Poetry Center has released a number of special recordings, including the following audio of W.H. Auden reading at the 92nd Street Y. It was recorded on January 22nd 1955 and begins with his reading of Bucolics, a cycle of seven poems about the relation of man to nature.
