Books: Poets' Account

LETTERS FROM ICELAND—W. H. Auden & Louis MacNeice—Random House ($3).

In the summer of 1936 young English Poet Wystan Hugh Auden got a publisher's advance for a trip to Iceland, "to write a book." Forthwith he asked young Irish Poet Louis MacNeice to come along. For several months the two poets toured the fishy, subArctic, volcanic island, sat around in its corrugated-iron farmhouses and dumpish hotels. When their time was up they had written a number of letters in prose and verse, collected a farrago of literate jottings about Iceland's history, culture,...

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