Explain the features of poetry and poet in relation to the poem "In Memory of W. B. Yeats".

 W. H. Auden was admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; his incorporation of popular culture, current events, and vernacular  speech in his work; and also for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information.  The poet says that-

“In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.”

Here Auden tells about the function of the poet. When Europe is in the grip of the terror of war, nations are isolated by mutual hatred. People have no fellow feeling or sympathy At that time, the poets generally pursue the hidden truth, to explore the subliminal depths. With the gift of his poetry, of saying things in a powerful manner he can persuade mankind to rejoice even in the face of the curse of war. The great poetry can turn a curse into a blessing. It is great poetry that can illumine and transform the human soul, and make the fountain of love and sympathy gush out of it. The poet's own acceptance of life, and zest for it, alone can fertilize the human soul, and teach it to accept life and rejoice in this great gift of God. Thus poetry can have a transforming and ennobling influence on the human soul. He further says that-

“For poetry makes nothing happen; it surveys

In the valley of its making where executives

Would never want to temper, flows on south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs

Raw towns that we believe and die in, it survives

A way of happening, a mouth.”

 Here Auden launches into an attempt at relationship between outer landscape and inner states. Auden says that poetry makes nothing happen. The poetry of W. B Yeats could not change the destiny of the Irish people. Despite the great poetry of Yeats Ireland has remained the same. The people of Ireland still have their madness and their weather. His poetry fails to produce any revolutions or to make change in society. The poet is dead. But what lives after him is his style. It survives the death of the poet not for what the poet has said, but for the way in which he said it. It is the language, art and the manner of his poetry, which come to dwell in the sublime depths of human mind. It is the language, the way of saying, the style, survives as a voice as a way of expressing the human condition that is its real significance. 

Poetry is here compared to a river, which can fertilize only the soul, it cannot affect the outside world.

 

Finally poetry is described as ‘the healing fountain’, the water that nurtures our souls. Nightmares and barking dogs and hitting the rock bottom are some images of death, destruction and doom, which are all expected in an elegy.  Rhyme, form and meter are the poem’s blueprints. Each of the three sections of the

poem has unique formal characteristics. Auden uses the traditional elegy form, simple rhyming couplets as well as free form. Yeats himself was a master of form. He played around with everything from traditional Irish limericks and lyrics to epics. Auden’s poetic tribute alludes to Yeats’ technical skill.

 

In this poem the speaker is very close to the poet. The setting reflects the tone of the poem. The first section gives the grim details of dying in a hospital. However apart from the setting of Yeats’ actual death, the whole landscape of his life including Ireland is  depicted. The setting expands to include the world in 1939. Auden paints a vivid picture  of a world built of isolationists and the nightmarish oncoming of World War II. The three settings of the poem cover the mundane details of life even as it philosophizes on the  state of world affairs and the value of poetry.

 All of the above features the poet explain in relation to the poem” In Memory”.