thoughts on poetry

In using Auden's In Memory of W. B. Yeats for the earlier blog post I of course had to read it...two things struck me that are utterly irrelevant and uninteresting to you, likely, but because I've decided I like what I think I will note them.

1. This line reminded me of Mark Strand's poems:

By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

And then I thought, maybe all Mark Strand is emptied out Auden.

2. This phrase reminded me of Rilke (but the Rilke trs. by Stephen Mitchell who definitely would have read this Auden poem):

it survives,/A way of happening, a mouth.

And the Rilke/Mitchell:

True singing is a different breath, about
nothing. A gust inside the god. A wind.

Why do I care to write this? I don't know. I just "heard" these echoes in my mind and wanted to share them.

Auden's Yeats

Rilke/Mitchell

Mark Strand