Wystan

For years I did not “understand” W.H. Auden; his work did not sound like “poetry” to me, which is to say I could not recognize his “feeling,” the wellspring of his language. But I kept buying his books and putting them on the shelf; something other than “education” kept me going back. In any case, I found his biography easier to absorb than his work; there one found what one could easily recognize as poetry: the broken heart, the faithless loves, Wystan’s dogged determination to be accepted by those who could not care as he cared. Last summer, I took Auden’s “Nones,” with me somewhere, and my heart opened up to this: Auden wrote essays in the form of poems, and poems in the form of essays; he was a pre-Godard figure in his belief that the poetic essai (French for: attempt) could contain many things all at once: narrative, poetry, analysis, dreams, autobiography. “Nones,” is a thin book, filled with information and observation after brilliant observation concerning time–time eroding not only our bodies, but eating itself. Limestone drips time. Poetry makes a line of time. Our tits sagging tells us it’s time to face who we are, too. Today, after an afternoon of reporting, a thin young white American man-boy gave me a ride in his country cab; he eyed the women who were walking nearby, saying he didn’t like American women, he wanted a European woman. “Like, from Russia. Or Asia.” Then he said, “This is a weird conversation to have with a client.” The conversation wasn’t strange; he was using the metaphor of his displeasure with the sameness that surrounded him as a way of telling me how my different presence affected him. I’ve been that object before and heard that anger before and waited longer than a cab ride for any number of drivers to admit that to me. This afternoon’s driver said a number of unpleasant things, he was very unhappy in his (silent) desire for men and so blamed it all on his dissatisfaction with women. Despite my discomfort, there was empathy: I imagined being trapped in his body, trapped in his car, trapped in this state. Then I remembered Auden and how he took his personal unhappiness about public and private matters–faithless lives in a godless state–and made it something else, including making work that made us feel something else.