Apart from renowned for his literary genius, Auden has been credited for his ability to locate his poetry within the realities of the times, confronting them with a sense of responsibility as an artist, as well as with a sense of hope as an individual. He was able to impact the reader's mind in persuasive and compelling ways, such that the poems exudes a sense of modernity in its technique and outlook. His poetic landscape is often the backdrop 'against which some human situation is considered or a symbol of the psyche.' Auden often assumes the role of the detached and 'clinical' poet where he reveals few of his personal fears or emotions but at the same time, concerned with the addressing the states of socio-political and humanity.
             His poetry situates itself in the present, and when he did not look back on history, he did so with a clear sense of the present as the realm that was pertinent. In Spain, for example, Auden revisits the history of modern civilisation with less of an air of nostalgia than with the drive of the rhetoric towards a serious contemplation of what is to be done 'to-day'. Because of the repetition of 'yesterday', the sudden insertion of the phrase 'but today the struggle' becomes a cognitively and emotionally powerful gesture. Auden's chronological listing of human progress and history is not nostalgic reminiscence. Rather, it is part of a purposive attempt to illustrate that those achievements belong in the past, and that the future in 'tomorrow' lies in a weak and elusive 'perhaps', hinging upon the nature of our response to the needs at the present.
             Spain is but one of Auden's many public poems that sought to address the issues of the time. In September 1, 1939, Auden captures the sense of futility and disillusionment characteristic of the period of the impending World War 2. The poem begins,
             Furnishing a sense ...