This poem originally appeared in a play The Ascent of F6, in which the mountain climber Michael Ransom goes on an expedition in the fictional country of Ostnia. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name this poem whose speaker says, “The stars are not wanted now; put out every one.” A stanza of this poem opens, “He was my North, my South, my East and West.”
ANSWER: “Funeral Blues”
[10e] “Funeral Blues” was written by this author, who wrote “I sit in one of the dives / On Fifty-second Street / Uncertain and afraid” to open his poem “September 1, 1939.”
ANSWER: W. H. Auden [or Wystan Hugh Auden]
[10h] This author recalls arguing with her daughter about reading “Funeral Blues” in the memoir Blue Nights. In a memoir, this author described using “Funeral Blues” to process the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne.
ANSWER: Joan Didion (The second memoir is The Year of Magical Thinking.)
<American Literature>