Stop All The Clock's: Poems Of Love And Loss by W.H. Auden

 

Stop All The Clock's: Poems Of Love And Loss by W.H. Auden.

Published 20th November 2025 by Faber Books.

From the cover of the book:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone . . .

W. H. Auden was the consummate poet of love and heartbreak. Stop All the Clocks presents a selection of his best known, most lucid poems, poems that pitch human frailty against a persisting desire for love and belonging.

Here are the anxieties that beset our waking and sleeping hours: the delirium of desire, the torture of unrequited love, the trauma of loss and displacement. And here, in these resonant, dazzling poems, is the understanding we might be looking for.

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There cannot be many people who have not cried their eyes out at the scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral where John Hannah puts his heart and soul into his recitation of Funeral Blues, at the funeral of his dead lover - I know I have every time I have seen it. It beautifully conveys the utter devastation of raw grief, and it remains one of my favourite poems.

But I must admit that when it came to the work of W.H. Auden, I would have been hard put to name more than two poems by him, despite the fact that he was a prolific writer of poetry throughout his life -the other poem being, Tell Me The Truth About Love. So I was delighted to have the opportunity to discover more about Auden through this wonderful collection of his poems about love and loss, entitled with the first line from his most famous poem.

I was pleased to see that both the poems I am familiar with are included here: the rest of the book is a revelation. The most surprising thing is the incredible breadth of subject matter Auden explores when it comes to different facets of love and loss. There are poems here that instantly connect with relatable feelings about attraction, yearning, desire, romance, and enduring love, as well as the sting of rejection, long distance relationships, and the unbearable pain of lost partners - but there are also reflections on belonging and identity, ideology and even the experience of refugees, which I was not expecting.  

After consuming Auden's powerful lines, I found myself wanting to know more about the man himself and his inspirations. I ended up going down a rabbit hole about his life, which was fascinating, especially his relationship with Christopher Isherwood of Goodbye to Berlin (aka Cabaret) fame. 

This is a truly intriguing collection, which I can highly recommend to anyone who also wants to delve into Auden's work beyond Funeral Blues. It is beautifully produced in hard back, with lovely endpapers too!

Stop All The Clocks is available to buy now in hardcover.

Thank you to Faber Books for send8ng me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was born in York and brought up in Birmingham. His first book, Poems, was published by T.S. Eliot at Faber & Faber in 1930. In 1939 he and Christopher Isherwood left for America, where Auden spent the next fifteen years lecturing, reviewing, editing, and writing poetry and opera librettos. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.