The poet Jenny Joseph, who has died aged 85, might well have wondered a little ruefully whether WH Auden was altogether correct in maintaining that “poetry makes nothing happen”. Her famous Warning (“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/ With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me ... ”) was written when she was 28, and after its appearance in an early book went almost unnoticed for 25 years. Then, because of its contention that growing old should be a defiant process, it gradually began to be slotted into serious selections of writing about old age, and for its merit ended up in one or two grander places, such as Philip Larkin’s Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse in 1973.
With unforeseen consequences. It was eventually spotted by a retired public relations aide to Lady Bird Johnson, widow of the US president Lyndon Johnson, who enthused about it in an article in Reader’s Digest as an encouragement to older women looking to feel defiant and active again after recovering from illness.
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