It’s Wystan Hugh Auden’s birthday. You probably know him as W.H. Auden. Born in 1907, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, English-American poet wrote many of the poems you were forced to read in college, including The Age of Anxiety. So . . . did he partake? Indeed he did. Poets require inspiration, and he found his in this lifelong routine: benzedrine and sobriety during the day, then, once the hard day’s work of crafting sonnets was over, a flood of vodka martinis and wine. He also kept a bottle of vodka on his bedside table, because, you know, he might wake up and need something to do.
