Poetry and Uselessness

<p>W.H. Auden famously claimed poetry makes nothing happen. That may or may not be the case but the <i>idea</i> that poetry makes nothing happen has itself been extremely influential and has made a great deal happen in the world. This book examines several of the main currents in literary history as that influential idea flows through poetry and into the wider world. Since the invention of the idea it has influenced theories of education; helped legitimize the entry of the middle class into political life; spawned ideas of symbolism that are still with us; formed a bulwark protecting literary culture from the commercial world; helped create the artistic subculture of bohemia; informed queer discourse and identity; and helped create both contemporary literary taste and the institutions that support it. Through chapters on figures from Coleridge and Tennyson to Yeats Eliot Auden Gertrude Stein and John Ashbery we see how maintaining that poetry has no use in the world has been and remains a very powerful—and useful—idea.</p>