Poetry matters
"What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days?"
Philip Larkin (1922-1985) Days
"Poetry makes nothing happen," wrote W.H. Auden. Yet at times of crisis, we look to poets to remind us of our humanity. Perhaps this explains the extraordinary interest in Pope John Paul's Roman Triptych published Thursday.
The search for comfort and meaning in poetry, especially in the sparse works of Larkin, Auden and, now, Seamus Heaney is, no doubt, a response to the inaccessibility and extreme aestheticism of so much contemporary verse. Perhaps the irrelevance of most modern poetry is because so many late 20th-century poets had the luxury of viewing history from a sheltered distance. In the absence of tragedy and terror, they were left undisturbed to create private, coded worlds. Many curious creations emerged, but challenging statements about the human condition were rare. It's only after reading the likes of Auden, Larkin and Heaney that you begin to question your moral choices.
"What will survive of us is love" wrote Larkin in An Arundel Tomb, and his poem expressed what so many felt when Anthony Lane quoted it in The New Yorker to commemorate the man and woman who jumped hand-in-hand to their deaths from New York's World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.
Diarist of the day: Franz Kafka, 9 March 1914"I am too tired, I must try to rest and sleep, otherwise I am lost in every respect. What an effort to keep alive! Erecting a monument does not require the expenditure of so much strength."
