Funny thing about poetry, as an artform, it's defined by the necssary condition that by the time we are able to fully appreciate it, it's already too late. It's

Funny thing about poetry, as an artform, it's defined by the necssary condition that by the time we are able to fully appreciate it, it's already too late. It's like a form of comedy, but instead of punchlines you get these wryly buried landmines that you only appreciate in a future where you've stepped on one, and it's a very different kind of laughter. Sometimes when I read Auden, I wonder if he was really writing a kind of curse for us to discover just in the moment where it clicks that we are here because we have failed to take heed. Poignant, anyway.