Auden, you mad, depressing, encouraging poet!

I am really enjoying the Auden we've been reading for this class.  I loved rereading those I've read before - "Musee des Beaux Arts", "Funeral Blues", and "The Unknown Citizen", for example - and I relished the new experience of reading "In Praise of Limestone" (that was sure a challenge!) and "The Shield of Achilles".  One of our assignments for this class is to put together a web page focusing on some aspect of modern British poetry or on a poet.  I was having a hard time with this.  Today, I think I get it.  I should have gotten it before.  I mean, life is full of just such contradictions as Auden and the other poets I'm currently studying present.  Aren't we lucky to live in a time when we have leisure time to spend on the internet and dancing and poetry and whatever else we wish?  But on the other side of the world or down the street are people fighting just to live, soldiers fighting in wars of dubious origins, poisoned streams, vacuous celebrities - I could go on, but I think you get my point.  The bounty of the modern world isn't a bounty for all.  And even those of us lucky enough to benefit . . .  I feel uncomfortable sometimes, knowing how lucky I am, and feeling that there is so little I can do to pass that "luck" on to others.  Yes, I know there is more to these poets and their poems than what I find affecting me, but that's what I'm taking from them today.

I do love me some W.H. Auden

I've been enjoying the opportunity to explore more of Auden's poetry.  Today: "September 1, 1939," "In Memory of Sigmund Freud," and "In Memory of W.B. Yeats."  These are three very specific, very personal poems.  While I enjoyed them all, the first really hit home.  It is Auden's reaction to the news that Germany has invaded Poland.  Auden chooses not to attack Hitler and the Nazis specifically.  Instead he addresses the false and common belief that the masses must follow authority - that the Fuhrer, or the President, or the Prime Minister knows best and will protect us.  Auden acknowledges that each individual ultimately only acts in his or her own best interest and warns that without love we will perish (an idea that he later recanted, cutting the poem from future printings).  Of course we won't die, we'll just live a bit more miserably than we would without love.  But, as I posted on our class discussion board, without respect, we will die.  If I cannot respect those with whom I disagree, how can I expect them to respect me?  And more importantly, how can we then coexist peacefully?  I wonder where wars come from, huh?

Love, War, Alienation, and Inanity

Today I read "Lullaby" (not "A Lullaby" - took me a few to figure out I'd read the wrong poem) and "Refugee Blues" by W.H. Auden and "Not Waving But Drowning"" and "Pretty" by Stevie Smith.  I loved them all.  (I did enjoy "A Lullaby" as well, but it was a bit difficult to answer questions about romantic love based on this poem.)  It's funny.  We started out with T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."  Eliot seems to have crammed every bleak, confusing, contradictory thing about life into that poem.  Now, we're looking at several of these issues individually.  Life in modern society can be overwhelming.  We can't fix everything.  Personally, I've tried to stake out one or two little corners where I might be able to make a small difference.  I did enjoy each of these poems, as I have enjoyed everything I've read so far.  I just find it depressing sometimes, focusing on problems for which I suspect no solution will be forthcoming in my lifetime.