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Analysis Of The Poem ' This Lunar Beauty ' Essay

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W.H. Auden’s “This Lunar Beauty” can be read as a poem as an enigmatic love that baffles the speaker, as he attempts to understand the complexity of the lunar beauty. However, Auden lived during the early 1900s and identified himself as a gay man, though he was married, briefly, to a woman. Understanding Auden’s biographical lifestyle can lead one to read “This Lunar Beauty” under a queer lens. Although the queerness of the poem is not directly stated; the structure and language of the poem lead “This Lunar Beauty” to be interpreted as a gay relationship that is hidden during the day and is able to come forth during the night when both the speaker and the lunar beauty are able to be their true selves. When reading Auden’s “This Lunar Beauty” under a queer lens, it is imperative to note how Auden plays with the passage of time and in turn, how the difference between day and night lead the poem to undergo a queer interpretation. The “beauty” that the speaker finds himself captivated by is surrounded by darkness. Particularly, the speaker personifies this love as “lunar,” as in, it is not found during the day light hours. By characterizing the love as lunar, not only does it relay to the audience that this love the speaker has found is strictly found during the darkness, but also that this love is cyclic in nature, similar to the moon’s cycles. The image of the moon is striking and leads to an interpretation of the poem that can be seen as a queer poem. The lunar beauty is
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