(Illustration by Lilli Carré)
Poetry is close to my heart. I would be lost without its very specific magic, its ability to spark wonder and shock and to open up fresh vistas on life in God. But as W. H. Auden famously says in his elegy for W. B. Yeats, “poetry makes nothing happen.” Now, Yeats’s own poetry is inextricably linked with a particular place (Ireland), and it’s risky to take a line from Auden’s elegy and apply it to poetry more generally. Still, the claim is suggestive and challenging.
In spiritual terms, what can poetry actually do and achieve? And what if its abiding power lies in its doing nothing? I say that not to limit the wider effects of poetry. I’ve no doubt it can stir strong responses at a political or social level. I suspect tyrants fear poets. At the same time, I am excited by the idea that poetry is an art form that can lead us closer to God—who is “no thing” among things—precisely by doing nothing.
Not unreasonably, as you read the above you might first ask what I mean by poetry. I don’t propose to offer a definition. I trust that each of us has a reasonably informed idea of what constitutes poetry, an idea which would include the writings of Emily Dickinson, John Donne, T. S. Eliot, and so on. So, what would it mean to say that, for example, Dickinson’s “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” does nothing and thereby may be especially spiritually valuable?
