SOURCE: "Auden's New Citizenship," in Raritan, Vol. 17, No. 2, Fall, 1997, pp. 90-103.

In the following essay, Caserio discusses Auden's attitudes toward civic allegiance, the significance of his emigration to the United States, and the association of homosexuality with exile.

W. H. Auden underwent two conversions: one to Christianity, one to American citizenship. We treat the first conversion seriously. We have no serious account of the second. Is it a sign of our confused or divided attitudes towards citizenship that we gloss over the poet's manner of belonging to—or of appearing to own—one political state rather than another? Yes, we acknowledge Auden's civic voices. But as we work out the meanings of the poet's civic dimension, our understanding of the poet's feelings about civic attachments gets obscured by a typically Audenesque sleight-of-hand. We ask the post-1938 Auden to show us his proof of citizenship, his passport, so that...