Does Poetry Make Anything Happen?

W.H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century just past, wrote the gorgeous elegy "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"published a year after Yeats's death in January, 1939.

A fragment of a line in that poem reads:
"For poetry makes nothing happen. . ."

I read that line twice yesterday: in the morning when I was looking for models of elegies and later yesterday afternoon in an article on Slate.com. (By the bye, the author of the Slate article misattributed the line to Ezra Pound.)

Anyway, I wonder if our brilliant LitNetters might discuss their thoughts on of Auden's poetic statement.

Do you think poetry matters at all? Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter.

Why do so few people read poetry today?

Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie

Well, I can't help but to think of the words of Wilde for a couple of instances. Firstly, the famous line from the preface of Doran Gray "all art is quite useless" and to add a new angle to the question "Why do so few people read poetry today?" with (from my bad memory) "the art form that has survived the best is poetry because the public do not read it, and therefore do not influence it." In other words the popular market does not infect or dilute the original art form, therefore you could argue that it is a good thing that most people don't read poetry.

With all that said, I do not want to take the line from Auden "For poetry makes nothing happen" out of context for I am unfamiliar with the poem, or at least it doesn't spring to mind at present.

Anyway, back to the questions:

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Do you think poetry matters at all?

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Well it does for me, my passion and love of literature makes it so. What others think I care little for, I do care, but it is little.

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Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter

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I don't quite get what you mean, I have had a long day, say again?

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Why do so few people read poetry today?

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I think to some extent you could argue that written poetry has always been read and appreciated by a select audience, granted it was more popular in the past with the general public, but you could say it came under threat as mass literature with the invent of the novel as a literary form. Certainly going into the 20th century the 'new' media of film and cinema has pushed poetry even further down the scale. Some big generalisations here granted, but I am thinking in general terms at this point. Now of course the form of poetry is even further away from the mass audience with the importance and influence of digital technologies. Actually today more people write poetry than actually read it (and most of it is rubbish).

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Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

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That's quite a big set of questions in its own right. For me poetry gets under the skin and invades the mind, it is still the 'highest form of literature' in my opinion, even if that is unpopular with the postmodernist brigade. Poetry can do so much in so little space. Good poetry can affect all sides of human emotion. Really poetry is everything, even if today most people think it is nothing.

The line is in context of the War, both finished and brewing, and parallels Yeats' last poem, Under Ben Bulben. The poem was clearly in Auden's mind while he was writing, but I think the line refers specifically to the closing lines:

Cast a cold eye,
On life, On death
Horseman pass By!


In truth, Auden thought the world had ultimately failed, and I think that is why he left England, never to return, just after the composition of this poem. The beginning of the second World War only heightened his disillusionment.

Thanks for your replies. Here are Auden's lines that follow the
line in question:

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.


As to the line "poetry makes nothing happen,"Auden hated theatricality, or the habit poets have of regarding their role as more important than it really is, either as guardians of revelation (Yeats) or "unacknowledged legislation for mankind." (Shelley.)The introduction to Auden's section in the Norton anthology states
that Auden "has questioned the efficacy of his art even while delighting in it. Though much of his early work is prophetic of social and political change, he repeatedly insists that poetry can have no value in other spheres."

Indeed,as the poster above states, the presage of looming war was on Auden's mind, also he may have felt a little twinge for having criticized Yeats's unapologetically blatant mysticism and dabbling in the occult. Auden, by contrast, was rather straightforward, and in one of poetry's main "occupational hazards" --what's more important, sound or sense?-- Yeats favored the former and Auden, the latter. But reading this elegy the reader can infer the deep respect and esteem which Auden held for the Irish bard.

According to the introduction in my trusty Norton anthology(I'll paraphrase), Auden felt a connection with the sensibilities of T.S. Eliot; consciously avoiding the Romantic tradition, he was
a "disenchanter," albeit with images both "homely" and "abstract," not to mention his gifts for ironic understatement unparalleled wit.

Over the centuries poetry has certainly lost the almost-religious significance and influence upon the public weal as it had in Homer's time, or even as late as Elizabethan times, in which poetic virtuosity, almost a kind of competitive gamemanship arose.

Eliot famously defined poetry as "a superior form of entertainment," and if you buy that notion, then it will explain why poetry as an entertainment option is way down on the contemporary list of movies, videos, Internet sites, and the
smorgasbord of offerings for the 2lst century consumer. I do believe that very few folks bother reading poems these days, and even the existence of poetry is publicly acknowledged only on high-falutin', solemn occasions, such as an Inaugural ceremony or weddings and funerals. If you define poetry broadly, and include song lyrics in that spectrum (which I do, especially among the lyrics of American standard songs composed in the 1930s and 40s), or even if you think that rap lyrics are a form of poetry, then poetry still "matters" as an entertainment.

But as I implied in my original posting, more people think they write "poetry" than actually read it. There is a sad reason for this, I think, and that is that the teaching of poetry is given short shrift in the public schools. When the students are assigned poetry, more often than not the emphasis is on the "what" ("what is the poem saying?" rather than the "how" (why did the
poet use this particular technique?) Because poetry has not been properly taught, kids don't know how to read it. "It's too hard!" they might moan and groan.

Admittedly, the dense and nearly incomprehensibly abstract poetry of the last four or five decades may have contributed to
its own obscurity.


Like Eliot, Auden loved the traditions of old English poetry and the Church of England, though his religious beliefs differed from those of Eliot in that Auden was "earthier" and less mystical. He also differed from Eliot in that his political beliefs veered left. The responsibility of an individual to shift focus upon the greater good ("moral revolution") is a recurrent theme: "a change of heart." He revised his own poems over and over again, even after their initial publication.

It is true that Auden seemed to have turned his back on England in favor of the United States (the opposite of Eliot's situation.)

But the statement above that he left England forever, never to return isn't absolutely correct.

He became an American citizen in 1946, and divided his life between Greenwich Village and a retreat in lower Austria. Yet in 1972 he went home to his old college, Christ Church, in Oxford
where he died in 1973.

Who knows, it could easily just gesture to this:

Quattrocento put in paint
On backgrounds for a God or Saint
Gardens where a soul's at ease;
Where everything that meets the eye,
Flowers and grass and cloudless sky,
Resemble forms that are or seem
When sleepers wake and yet still dream,
And when it's vanished still declare,
With only bed and bedstead there,
That heavens had opened.

From Under Ben Bulben, W.B. Yeats.

In truth, poetry achieves its goal. It makes something happen. It just doesn't particularly work well for politics - though some have tried. Prose is more suited for political discourse, poetry is more suited for what is beneath the political discourse. It usually doesn't encourage people to rise up, but it shows the possibility.

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Originally Posted by AuntShecky

W.H. Auden, one of the greatest poets of the century just past, wrote the gorgeous elegy "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"published a year after Yeats's death in January, 1939.

A fragment of a line in that poem reads:
"For poetry makes nothing happen. . ."

I read that line twice yesterday: in the morning when I was looking for models of elegies and later yesterday afternoon in an article on Slate.com. (By the bye, the author of the Slate article misattributed the line to Ezra Pound.)

Anyway, I wonder if our brilliant LitNetters might discuss their thoughts on of Auden's poetic statement.

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Surely. I have said that art does not move society, it reflects society. I think that is what Auden is saying too. Sure there are activist writers, but frankly I do not believe they move society. Everyone mentions Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as having pushed the US toward confronting slavery and the civil war. Well, that debate had been going on for decades before the novel. At its most, perhaps the novel lit the powder keg, but the powder keg was loaded and ready to burst, but frankly even that I'm skeptical of. The country was headed for this civil war and it was an irreconcible difference where either a split was to occur or the South was to be catagorically defeated. I don't believe the novel had any substantial impact.

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Do you think poetry matters at all? Does it matter to anyone other than people who think they write poetry or actual readers of poetry, the number of the latter alas considerably smaller than the latter.

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Of course it matters. It captures the stories and language of our age. However, I also am skeptical that it captures more than that. People have seen some of my comments warning that you cannot assess an issue or a time and place from a work of art. It is a subjective opinion, not anthropological study nor an economic evaluation nor a statistical computation. It is based on anectdote and local mythology/urban legend from the impressions of a artist, and frankly artisit to me have never seemed all in tuned with reality. My goodness, here on lit net in recent days there is a popular thread that purports to claim we never went to the moon and that the moon landings were a hoax. But of course poetry and art matters because the stories and language matters and of course the aesthetics of art matter.

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Why do so few people read poetry today?

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Somewhere in the middle of the 19th century (in England and perhaps even the US but at other countries it may have been at a different time) a split developed between what we call artsy literature and more common/popular literature. I'm not exactly sure why and how the split developed but it did. I suspect it has something to do with one needing greater and greater knowledge of the intricacies of literature to appreciate the "artsy" stuff. A person can't just pick up TS Eliot without a good literature background and expect it to make sense. Poetry has fallen almost exclusively in the artsy side. Again I can't answer why.

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Does poetry make anything at all "happen"? If so, what happens. Why? How?

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I answered this above. In short no, becasue a poet is not an expert on anything other than poetry. Why would anyone heed the economic advice of a poet to solve the current economic problem?

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I'm eagerly anticipating a multitude of replies.

Auntie

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I hope that made sense. Good question Auntie. :)

Thanks for weighing in on this, Virgil. Your well-considered responses are always refreshing.

I cannot write a long reply at the moment but we need to define what it is that poetry is supposed to make happen -if anything- to be able to answer this question, no?

Whenever I confront a question such as the one you pose with reference to Auden's "For poetry makes nothing happen. . ." I always think to Robert Frost, who I think had the best take on the ultimate value of poetry.

His well-know phrase that poetry offers us (its readers) "a momentary stay against confusion" sums up what poetry "makes happen" quite well. To expound on this, I think that poetry affect the reader personally, quietly, and spiritually, and intellectually. But, baring a few exceptions here and there, it doesn't do much more than that.

Of course, its indirect influence may be great: someone is affected by a Shakespearean sonnet, T.S. Elliot's "Four Quartets," or the little poem my daughter wrote at day care today and is then moved to affect the world or her community in a some important way. . . .then sure poetry makes something happen in so much as the toast I had for breakfast helped me affect the world in some small way today.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I answered this above. In short no, becasue a poet is not an expert on anything other than poetry. Why would anyone heed the economic advice of a poet to solve the current economic problem?

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Strictly speaking, yes, but the simple fact that a man is a poet (even a talented poet) does not rule out his capabilities in other realms. I've read some of Yeats's political writings and, in addition to some of his scientific beliefs, he seems to have been completely backward. Philosophically I detest mysticism, but as a poet, Yeats is tops.

Concerning the U.S. economic problem, I'm sure some poets (like Pound) might have had a lot to say.

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Originally Posted by mayneverhave

Strictly speaking, yes, but the simple fact that a man is a poet (even a talented poet) does not rule out his capabilities in other realms. .

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Sure, if he's got other expertise. I'm an engineer in my work life. If I were to ever become a poet, I do think I know something of engineering. If a poet or writer has other expertise, it's outside of his poetic talents. One doesn't accentuate the other.

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I've read some of Yeats's political writings and, in addition to some of his scientific beliefs, he seems to have been completely backward. Philosophically I detest mysticism, but as a poet, Yeats is tops.

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That's exactly my point.

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Concerning the U.S. economic problem, I'm sure some poets (like Pound) might have had a lot to say

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Oh I'm sure that he would have lots to say. Pound spoke about economics and it was all asinine. Like I said above, no one would or should take it seriously. But for some strange reason people take celebrities and poets/writers/artists seriously in endeavors they have no expertise. Amazing to me.

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Originally Posted by Scheherazade

I cannot write a long reply at the moment but we need to define what it is that poetry is supposed to make happen -if anything- to be able to answer this question, no?

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Yes, I was a little confused about it. I made an assumption Auntie was referring to social reform. But it was an assumption. She may have had other thoughts in mind.

Sidney, and later Eliot argued that poetry brings one to the gate of the Garden of Eden. I am of the same mind - the vision of the poetry, through the metaphor, allows for that which cannot be contained in words to be expressed through comparison, and trope.

There is a discussion going on amongst Canadian poets about whether one can actually write wilderness. The general conclusion is that though one cannot actually write wilderness, one can circle it, and come close to it, allowing for the reader's perceptions to get close enough that they can get the idea, and use their own imagination to take them over the fence. Metaphor allows for the unreal to temporarily be the real, through what Coleridge called the "suspension of disbelief". Metaphor is the soul of the imagination, and metaphor is the soul of poetry. One cannot feel, but one can relate, by means of comparison.

Only poetry can do that. Of course then, poetry then acknowledges its own failure. Ultimately it can only offer a glimpse, and ultimately that glimpse has to die. Poetry is bound to a cycle of time, and each word, line, stanza, and poem naturally has to die. But the words, through rereading, are allowed to be reborn within the reader's imagination, for a time, and to offer an outlet into another world.

This is the preoccupation of all poetry, and is perhaps done the best in great works, like Wordsworth's Inclinations Ode, Eliot's Four Quartets, Shakespeare's Great Sonnets, and Leopardi's Canti. One cannot walk into paradise through poetry, but one can come to the gate, and that is the function.

Where does that Plenty dwell, I’d n like to know,
Which fathered poor desire, as Plato taught?
Out on the real and endless waters go
Conquistador and stubborn Argonaut.
Where Buddha bathed, the golden bowl he brought
Gilded the stream, but stalled its living tide.
The sunlight withers as the verse is wrought.
I die of thirst, here at the fountain-side.

From The Ballade of the Duke of Orleans by Richard Wilbur, Bolding mine.

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Originally Posted by JBI

Sidney, and later Eliot argued that poetry brings one to the gate of the Garden of Eden. I am of the same mind - the vision of the poetry, through the metaphor, allows for that which cannot be contained in words to be expressed through comparison, and trope.

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That is a great statement JBI. I agree with it entirely.

Eliot says it far better than I can at the end of Burnt Norton:

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Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

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In fact, the whole collection of the Four Quartets seems to meditate on the limitations of words. Eliot can bring us to the Rose Garden, but we are unable to enter with him.

This is a highly romantic view of literature, and as an artist and lover of art, I can appreciate it.

However, I'm plagued by doubt. This metaphysical "that which cannot be said"; how can we be sure it has any existence? Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. I understand how metaphor conveys a sense, a mood - if you will - but is it not merely the psychology of, in this case, T.S. Eliot, and not some grand artistic existence?

The Garden of Eden (in the way you use the term) is a beautiful thought, but how can we be sure it is nothing more?