Here’s a recording of an evening event in which I participated in early Fall 2019. Dana Gioia, the Poet Laureate of California among other honors, spoke to work of Auden marking the beginning of the World War II, and how poetry uniquely gives voice to our experience as much as it forms us.
My response (around 55:55) delves into the early roots of poetry in ancient literature, how it provides a new way of speaking that is performative and defamiliarization.