In the face of fire, flood, plague, environmental catastrophe and political chaos the challenge is that poetry, in Auden's words, 'show an affirming flame'.
The poems in
The Dancing Man
are an attempt to move from grief and loss towards consolations, however limited these might be. Intimations of connection and inter-dependence between all living things is the fragile basis for a first step towards spiritual re-orientation and an art of hope.