Poetry and Uselessness:
From Coleridge to Ashbery

Essays

W.H. Auden famously claimed that "poetry makes nothing happen." Whether true or not, this idea has profoundly influenced literary history and the wider world. This book explores how this notion has:

• Influenced education theories

• Legitimized middle-class political engagement

• Spawned enduring symbolism

• Shielded literary culture from commercialization

• Created Bohemian artistic subcultures

• Informed queer discourse and identity

• Shaped contemporary literary taste and institutions

Through chapters on figures like Coleridge, Tennyson, Yeats, Eliot, Auden, Gertrude Stein, and John Ashbery, we see how the assertion that poetry is useless has proven to be a remarkably powerful—and useful—idea.

Routledge, 1st edition
September 30, 2021
264 pages