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Podcast: New Books in Politics and Polemics
Episode: Caroline Levine, "The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Description: W. H. Auden once said, âPoetry makes nothing happen.â Audenâs quote has been used for so many purposes, it might be worth remembering what he meant. Audenâs line is importantly from a poem memorializing W.B. Yeats, a politician and a poet. Auden meant that despite Yeatsâs poetry, âIreland [still] has her madness and her weather still.â Yeatsâs poetry didnât stop suffering. But Auden acknowledges that poetry is a âway of happeningâ that survives and persists. Todayâs guest, Caroline Levine, has written a brilliant new book The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis (Prince...