The power of her poetry forces the reader to turn inwards and question their own biases and views of what it truly means for a woman, flawed and imperfect, to exist in a male-dominated society.
Through constant oscillation between the imagined and the tangible, Auden presents the problem of love; even when the “you” only exists in the imagined past, the speaker cannot help but try, through language, to bring them into the tangible present.
