Poems Written Abroad

"The interest of this beautifully presented volume from the Lilly Library, expertly edited by Christoph Irmscher, lies both in its author and in its moment. Stephen Spender is one of the central lyric poets of the first half of the 20th century in Britain. Ardent, clumsy, excruciatingly open, Spender was for a while a major conduit through which European styles of writing flowed into British poetry. This carefully organized (and decorated) book of poems, composed by an 18-year-old Spender in France and Switzerland during the summer of 1927, shows a young, painfully self-conscious writer [embracing] a generous internationalism that sought to resist the gravitational pull of the national ties Eliot had accepted."

~Nicholas Jenkins, coeditor of "In Solitude, for Company": W. H. Auden after 1940

"This beautiful book allows us to witness the birth of a poet. Poems Written Abroad offers a fascinating record of travels and emotions in verse, touching for its youthfulness and impressive for its variety and intensity. Traveling in France and Switzerland, through the undiscovered terrains of poetry present and past, guided by a young master learning his trade—what could be more delightful?"

~Massimo Bacigalupo, author of The Forméd Trace: The Later Poetry of Ezra Pound

"Crackling with sensuality and ... poetic ambition."

~Jim McCue, editor (with Christopher Ricks) of The Poems of T. S. Eliot: Collected and Uncollected Poems Vol 1

"Poems Written Aboard doesn't have the stupendous weight of his [Spender's] best-known poems or even the clever fun of his prose works, but it is delightful on several other levels. Clearly it's a notebook of someone who wants to be a poet, who must be a poet, and who is spending a summer on the continent, teaching himself the trade.... Christoph Irmscher's fourteen-page introduction, along with his bibliography and notes, tell you all you need to know about the manuscript's history and its details."

~Felice Picano, The Gay & Lesbian Review

"Highly recommended."

~Choice

"Poems Written Abroad is a sort of prelude to the Spender story. It's a facsimile, with facing page transcription, of a poetic notebook that Spender kept for a couple of months in his late teens, while brushing up his French in Nantes and Lausanne before going up to Oxford. It is a very handsome production published by the Lilly Library of Indiana University. There are a few intimations of the poet he would become: Christoph Irmscher in his excellent introduction notices the way the images bump against one another 'like a badly made puzzle', and also 'the pervasive feeling that somewhere someone is having a more authentic experience'."

~Seamus Perry, London Review of Books