Join the Cathedral's poetry consultant Evan Craig Reardon as he reads and leads us in the beauty and wisdom of Auden's poem which deals with eternal values in a society in flux, touching on problems of Christian living today and other themes of contemporary importance.

This is a program of Cathedral Arts, a mission of The Cathedral of All Saints.

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Long description:

W.H. Auden’s “New Year Letter” is a long, complex poem meditating on “Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform” as a year ends and a new one begins. Critics have commonly understood this poem to mark a turning point in Auden’s career, as he moved from a secular poetics into a more religious mode. The poem’s speaker grapples with society and eternal values, what it means to live and live again, and how all this could be adhered to in a society in such a state of flux. “New Year Letter,” then, takes on themes of contemporary importance, which are currently very much in the forefront as we confront the problems of the Christian living today. This talk will offer a reading of “New Year Letter” that draws out the wisdom of the poem and uses it as a model for seeking to understand these problems as they impact the Church and Christians today

Evan Craig Reardon is a poet, and the librarian and archivist for the Flow Chart Foundation. He is also the archivist and poetry consultant for the Cathedral of All Saints. Evan is completing a Master’s in Library and Information Science at SUNY Albany where he researches archives and records management, and is completing a Master’s in English literature where he researches poetry and poetics, also at SUNY Albany.