Creative Works

I first became aware of the power of of W.H. Auden’s poetry when I was watching the film ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, in which the actor playing Matthew read Auden's poem, ‘Funeral Blues’, at the funeral of Gareth, his rumbustious partner. I swear there was not a dry eye in the house. Not only did John Hannah’s tender rendition of ‘Stop all the clocks’, as the poem became popularly known, demonstrate the power of great poetry to move us, it spurred me on to read more Auden poems. I bought a copy of ‘Tell Me the Truth About Love’, (Auden, 1994), a small collection of fifteen love poems and cabaret songs that Auden wrote in the thirties, and which his publisher, Faber and Faber, republished on the back of the success of the film.

One poem in particular, ‘As I Walked out One Evening’, a traditional ballad-form poem, with a clearly identifiable modernist viewpoint, grabbed my attention. I later discovered that Auden’s perspective on the human condition was influenced by the groundbreaking poems of T.S. Eliot, who taught the younger poet ‘to see reality close-up, from a particular, and often squalid, urban viewpoint’. (Marchetti, 2006) However, unlike Eliot, Auden remained a formalist who preferred set form to free verse. In an interview in 1974 he said, ‘He could not understand how one can enjoy writing with no form at all. If one plays a game, one needs rules, otherwise there is no fun’, (Newman, 1974).

I admire the dexterity with which the poet mixes the traditional in this poem –

ballad form, folk song, nursery rhyme – with dark, voyeuristic images taken from twentieth-century city life, where

      In the burrows of the Nightmare,
      Where Justice naked is,
      Time watches from the shadow,
      And coughs when you would kiss.

No surprise that I can recognise Auden’s influence in some of my own poems. Not only because of a demonstrable preference for the set form and rhyme scheme of a ballad or a sonnet, but also because these forms allow me to introduce colloquialisms and vernacular dialogue as part of the narrative.

Auden’s concern with moral issues also informs some of my poems and like him I draw on my personal knowledge of other disciplines: politics, psychology, philosophy and religion. But I am no scholar and cannot say if Auden believed his poetry made the world a better place. Was it an article of faith when he wrote in his poem, ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’, that ‘Poetry makes nothing happen’? (Auden, 1994) I like to think he wrote for the sake of writing and did not make any bold claims for his poetry’s moral efficacy. Poetry is art, not life.

      Art in intention is mimesis
      But, realised, the resemblance ceases;
      Art is not life, and cannot be
      A midwife to society,
      For art is a fait accompli. (Auden, 1994)

What I really admire about Auden’s poetry and what informs my own work is his analytical clarity and his clever use of rhyme, as well as his search for meaning and order in the universal patterns of human existence. Not its moral authority or guidance. According to Gareth Reeves, Auden liked systems: ‘He liked to categorise and pigeonhole, but invariably with the awareness that all systems and categories only work on their own terms… consciousness, while freeing us to explain ourselves to ourselves and to each other, also imprisons us in the explanations we have framed’. (Reeves, 2006) This explains ‘the provisionality’ of the various systems of belief that Auden entertained.

I share Auden’s quest for ‘freedom within restraint’ which characterises his attitude to poetry. As Reeves argues ‘Poetic form may be arbitrary, but within its limits and limitations it permits, or rather induces, quest and discovery, although the object of discovery…is always out of reach’. (Reeves, 2006) The limits of poetry make us aware of what lies beyond. And because language, the medium of poetry, is the medium of all social activity, Auden once explained, more demands are made on it than any of the other arts. Yet poets carry on regardless working their magic with language. (Smith, 2006)

Much has been written about Auden’s reconversion to Christianity. As a sceptical reconnected Anglican, Auden’s rejoining the Anglican Church in 1940 is of interest. However, it does not hold any special significance for me, or affect in any way my appreciation of his poetry. Personally, I try to avoid overtly Christian themes and anthropomorphic language. Some critics have argued that Auden’s concentration on ethical concerns in some of his later work was influenced by his reconversion. Others have cautioned against reading his personal sentiments into his poetry: ‘In none of his poems can one feel sure that the speaker is Auden himself’ comments John G. Blair, (Blair, 1965). The poet speaks through different dramatic persona and the choice of an intimate, personal tone does not mean we can automatically assume it is the poet expressing himself directly through his poetry. This statement rings true for the poetry of W. H. Auden and is something I would like said about my own work.

References

Auden, W.H. (1994) “Tell Me the Truth About Love”, Faber and Faber Ltd, pp. 23 - 25.
Marchetti, P. (2006) “Auden’s Landscapes”, Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden, Edited by Stan Smith. Available at https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.015, pp. 200 - 211.
Newman, M. (1974), “W. H. Auden, The Art of Poetry”. Extract of an interview.
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3970/w-h-auden-the-art-of-poetry-no-17-w-h-auden.
Auden, W.H. (1994), “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”, W.H. Auden Collected Poems, Edited by Edward Mendelson, Faber and Faber Ltd, pp. 247 - 249.
Auden, W.H. (1994) “New Year Letter”, Ibid, pp. 201
Reeves, G (2006) “Auden and religion”, in The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden Edited by Stan Smith. Available at https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.015, pp. 188 - 199.
Smith, S (2006) “Auden’s light and semi-comic verse”, in The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden. Edited by Stan Smith. Available at https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1017/CCOL0521829623.015, pp. 96-109.
Blair, J. G. (1965) The Poetic Art of W.H. Auden, Princeton University Press.

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