Auden famously stated that "poetry makes nothing happen", which could be read or humility or a defense of art for art's sake. The latter makes more sense, as Auden was clearly hoping for a place in the lineage of his poetic antecedents, and a permanent home in the canon. And while he wrote big, important poems, his most direct influences were from those slightly older poets - Eliot and Yeats - who were concerned with creating a connection between personal faith and the decline of Western civilization.

Auden was writing poetry through the rise of fascism and Stalinism, along with the global trauma of World War 2, but he makes scant and oblique references to world events. He was more concerned with the personal and how it interacted with culture. While he ambitiously tried his hand at many different poetic forms, he most commonly can be seen in the mode of contemporaries like Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, only with a more British kind of emotional reserve, and a sharp sense of cultural context.

The last stanzas of "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" contradict Auden's belief in the limited power of poetry:

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.


Does Auden think that poetry save humanity? Or his he lauding the generous spirit of the artist? ( )

Alexander McCall Smith`s many references to Auden reawakened me to the poetry of this genius. I treasure this old copy I found on E-Bay. ( )