When it comes to poetry, I read different poets in different seasons for some reason. In winter, I tend to find myself digging into Auden. In spring, Dickinson. In summer, Rossetti. In fall, Heaney. In all seasons, Herbert and Eliot.

Reading through poetry in this way, different poems in each volume hit you in new or different ways each year. This is probably my third time through many of Auden’s poems, but when reading “In Memory of W.B Yeats” this go-round, I felt as if I were reading it for the first time.

In particular, Auden’s explanation of the purpose of poetry moved me. After all, poetry is strange and has run upon hard times in a hasty culture that wants quick factoids or news stories in fifty words or less.

In part II of “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” Auden, a poet himself, declares “For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives.” Upon first reading this seems to be a terribly disheartening reality to hear from one poet in his ode to another. Aren’t eulogies and odes meant to highlight all the successes of the honoree?

But I hear something like this from many people who say they don’t understand why people read poetry. They admit that poetry doesn’t “do anything” for them. After all, poetry isn’t meant to be primarily informative like an expose or a headline. Most good poetry isn’t intentional pedantic in nature. So why should we even bother?

In Part III, Auden beautifully elaborates on the lasting legacy of Yeats’s work:

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the framing of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”

The effects of poetry aren’t gauged with society’s normal measuring rods; however, good poetry has a seismic effect on the human soul.

Poetry teaches us to pause, to slow down, and to listen for meaning and meter, content and cadence. Such slowing down pairs well with the dizzying pace of our technologically quickened world.

Poetry plumbs the human heart in ways that facts rarely do. It holds us in a moment, teaches us to hover around that which we would normally not notice in our haste. Auden praised Yeats in poetry for his poetry’s power to persuade people to rejoice, to shift people’s perspective on their priorities, and to teach free men (who are often the most enslaved) how to praise.

So, while some say poetry does nothing, Auden is calling that “nothing” everything. Everything that matters, that is.

I will keep reading and writing poetry because it does deep work in my soul. It may not have the reach of click bait or op eds. But if it only survives, it is doing its slow, quiet work.

As a Christian, it is not lost on me how much poetry the canon carries! At the center of the Scriptures are the Psalms, a book of poetry that has strengthened and instructed the souls of God’s people for thousands of years. The creation narrative that tells us all we need to know about God’s intentions for the world and its people is written in the form of Hebrew poetry. Even in the Pauline epistles, those bastions of theology and doctrine, we find snippets of poetry. Recent neuroscience has found that poetry helps to integrate the two hemispheres of the brain, making us more whole and less bifurcated people. None of this should surprise us! God knows that we are embodied souls and that souls are shaped through the power of words and story.

Poetry survives. And that is enough.