When poets elegise other poets, the results are often more about self-scrutiny and analysis of the nature of poetry than about grief. Matthew Arnold commented on his elegy for Arthur Hugh Clough, ‘Thyrsis’ (1865), that ‘one has the feeling that not enough is said about Clough in it.’ In his elegy for W.B. Yeats (1939), Auden insists that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’. Both poems resist idealisation of their subject and use the elegy’s pastoral tradition as a way of distancing themselves from the poetic sensibility of their subject. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the ways in which Arnold and Auden’s visions of what a poet should be aren’t so far apart, and finish with a look at James Schuyler’s similarly unromantic elegy for Auden, in which he finds ‘so little to say’.

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Arnold's 'Thyrsis': ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldep11thyrsis⁠⁠

Auden's 'In Memory of W.B. Yeats': ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldep11yeats⁠⁠

More in the LRB:

Seamus Perry on Auden: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldep11auden⁠⁠

Stefan Collini on Arnold: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldep11arnold⁠