Anecdotal Evidence: `The Portentous Manner in Which He Said It'

Anecdotal Evidence: `The Portentous Manner in Which He Said It'
Excerpt:
From Anthony Hecht’s The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W.H. Auden (Harvard University Press, 1993) I’ve learned that Auden coined a word useful enough to be enshrined in the Oxford English Dictionary: soodling. From sound alone, without a context, what do you think it means? First I thought of noodling, as in a musician idly playing, working out a part or simply killing time. The same goes for doodling, another idle pastime. Because of its faintly comic sound, I guessed it might refer to that fine American folk art, goofing off.

In fact, the OED defines “soodling” as an “adj. poet. Rare” meaning “flows or moves slowly.” Auden uses it in the poem “Under Sirius” in Nones (1952): “…the baltering torrent / Shrunk to a soodling thread.”...