“Preludes” speaks of an experience of collective time in the modern city as it fractures, interrupts, and repeats itself, eliciting a groundhog-day-esque feeling of recurring stasis and disillusionment.
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.
