{"id":12646,"date":"2023-03-05T21:40:31","date_gmt":"2023-03-05T21:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12646"},"modified":"2023-03-21T21:42:45","modified_gmt":"2023-03-21T21:42:45","slug":"what-happened-to-auden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2023\/03\/05\/what-happened-to-auden\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happened To Auden?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/things-worth-remembering-w-h-audens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">from The Free Press<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Things Worth Remembering: W. H. Auden\u2019s Poignant Embrace<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p>One stanza of poetry captures the pleasure of holding another person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/t\/douglas-murray\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Douglas Murray<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/w_652,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89fa43ed-0882-43bd-b8cd-6092ccd61ec1_4361x2989.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">W.\u00a0H. Auden at Oxford University in 1972. (Alamy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the odd things about poetry is that people head to it in times of crisis or unusually heightened emotion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Poetry is not especially useful when describing the state of the traffic heading downtown. It is not required for summing up the pleasures of shopping. But there are moments when only poetry will do\u2014as the most distilled form of communication possible. Consider how people not just read but often try to write poetry upon the death of someone they love. Or when they are falling in love\u2014especially for the first time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There seems something important about the fact that even people who don\u2019t know they care for poetry instinctively know it is somewhere they can go to in extremis. Other art forms\u2014music, in particular\u2014may do similar work, but sometimes only poetry will do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Which brings me to the only other person, apart from Eliot and Shakespeare, who will crop up here more than once over the next year: W.\u00a0H. Auden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[ <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thefp.com\/p\/things-worth-remembering-w-h-audens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">click to continue reading at The Free Press<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from The Free Press Things Worth Remembering: W. H. Auden\u2019s Poignant Embrace One stanza of poetry captures the pleasure of holding another person. By\u00a0Douglas Murray One of the odd things about poetry is that people head to it in times of crisis or unusually heightened emotion.&nbsp; Poetry is not especially useful when describing the state [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}