An American living in Tuscany, the author recounts her and her husband's experiences as the guardians of two refugee families, one from Vietnam and one from Cambodia, who arrived penniless in the Italian countryside in the late seventies. (view table of contents)

The first nuanced, personal portrait of Auden and Kallman's relationship of more than thirty years, Wystan and Chester opens a window on a central aspect of Auden's life that has been overlooked by most biographies and critical studies.In a series of witty, poignant, and occasionally disturbing vignettes, Clark recounts the artists at work and at play: the raucous, Bacchanalian dinner parties on Ischia and the quiet mornings of writing on the porch of their house in Kirchstetten, Austria. She chronicles the early years of their friendship, when Auden and Kallman became her young daughter Lisa's constant companions, and when their nurturing partnership helped to foster unparalleled creative output for both. Remembering also Kallman's steady decline in his later years, Clark paints a sympathetic picture of the talented and troubled artist and of Auden's abiding love for him.Clark's story is generously sprinkled with glimpses of Auden's eccentricities. She recollects his fascination with female anatomy and with the process of birth; his unusual mix of moral seriousness and intellectual frivolity; his love for church ritual and his conviction that homosexuality was wrong.

Product Description: During the 1950s and 1960s, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman spent their summers on Ischia in the Gulf of Naples, at a time when the island had not yet been developed for tourists. The writer of this memoir, who herself arrived on Ischia as a young American divorcee looking for a new husband, got to know the friends well and remained close to them for the rest of their lives...read more