The Root of Praise

Auden could have said the root of poetry is imagination, or feeling, or even language. Instead he chose “imaginative awe,” and the choice of that second word matters enormously. Awe is not something you summon. It arrives when you stand before something that outscales you, something that requires, at minimum, a consciousness capable of recognizing its own limits. Before the poem can perform any of its hundred and one functions, Auden suggests, something has to happen to the poet first. An encounter has to occur.

And then there is the question of praise. Auden’s claim is surprisingly narrow: all of poetry’s effects, its full emotional range and descriptive power, serve a single obligation. The poem must praise “all it can for being and for happening.” This is not cheerfulness or optimism. You can praise grief. You can praise what frightens you. Praise here means something closer to acknowledgment: this existed, and I found it worthy of form. The poem becomes evidence that someone was genuinely present to something in the world.

When generation becomes effortless, this framework raises a real question. If the value of making lies in its effects alone, then whoever or whatever produces the most moving output wins. But if the deeper function of creative work is praise, then efficiency is beside the point. Praise requires a praiser, someone who has actually stood in the presence of the thing being named. The awe can’t be compiled from prior instances of awe. Whether readers can always distinguish between work born from encounter and work assembled from patterns of encounter remains uncertain. Whether the maker can tell the difference is perhaps the question that matters more.