Joseph Auslander was born in 1897 in Philadelphia. He graduated from Harvard and later attended the Sorbonne in Paris on a Parker fellowship. Auslander joined the Columbia University as a poet lecturer in 1929 and was nominated as the first poet laureate of the United States in 1937. He served in that position till 1941 and was succeeded by Allen Tate. Joseph Auslander’s first collection of poems ‘Sunrise Trumpets’ came out in 1924. His collection of war poems, ‘Unconquerables’ was published in 1943 and is hailed as a notable example of war poetry from America.
Wings at Dawn
Dawn is dense with twitter,
And the white air swims and sings
In rapid wings that glitter,
And the flashing of wings—
Delicate and fugitive shiverings.
The dews curl up in haze,
While the sun from his hive
Like a giant bee ablaze
Bursts dizzily alive—
And through the glow a thousand swallows dive.
Light like a storm
Deluges the grass,
And birds in a swarm
Wheel, dwindle and mass—
And their wings are split silver as they pass.
This poem is now in the public domain.
Joseph Auslander (1897-1965) was a American poet, novelist and translator. He was the first Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1937 and 1941.
