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Publication
London: Arena, 1990; xxxi, [1], 544 p.; 19,4 cm
Description
This collection of the lyrical, narrative and dramatic poetry published by Yeats from 1889 to 1939 incorporates his own final revisions and is indexed by titles and first lines.
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LibraryThing member emily_morine
I propose a little extra bit of poetry memorization, in honor of St. Patrick's honorable role in teaching the Irish to write. This fragment is the first poetry I ever remember reacting to with (to quote the author) passionate intensity; I have loved it ever since I could react to the pleasing
"These masterful images because complete
Grew pure in mind but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
Even though W.B. Yeats wrote his own long lyrical drama cursing St. Patrick (The Wanderings of Oisin), the monk's gift of writing was certainly well used by him. This third part of "The Circus Animals' Desertion" is one of those rare verses that is equally appealing on a surface level of pleasing lingual combinations (the only level on which I was drawn to poetry when I first discovered it) AND on a level of intellectual thought and emotion now that I have grown up a little bit. At age 10, I thought the phrase "the foul rag and bone shop of the heart" was about the coolest-sounding thing I'd ever heard. Now I think it's just about the truest idea that all grand human ideas and conceits come out of the unglamorous ephemera of our existence. Sometimes we feel like we've elevated ourselves above all that, but then we have to get humble and return to our beginnings. Not often pretty, but there it is.
I love the idea of this causal connection between the refuse of a society or an individual and its grandest self-conceptions. Both categories speak to one another, are one another in some ways. It's what makes encountering a discarded Burger King wrapper while out on a hike not only disgusting but sort of melancholic as well. The grand American vista of natural beauty is all bound up with the sweeping American bent toward self-destruction and blind disregard for the world around us, often mythologized as "individualism."
Within a given person, as Spaulding Gray has pointed out, the same applies. Gray has analyzed how our demons and neuroses are inextricably bound with our best qualities, but Yeats goes even further: our grand self-conceptions and beautiful images take their nourishment and impetus from our demons and the dirty realities of our everyday hearts, combined with our desire to make something useful, lovely or complete out of the pre-existing fragments or "garbage" that's left over after we live our quotidian lives. I love how the progression of trash in the poem steadily builds in value, causing the reader to question the worthlessness of any item listed: "old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can" (well, none of that is very valuable, the reader thinks), "old iron, old bones, old rags" (bones were once a living creature, and iron and rags items of utility), "that raving slut / Who keeps the till" (surely a living person is full of value; maybe we should take another look at that broken can). And "taking another look at that broken can" is just a less graceful way of expressing the need to "lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." Personally, I feel lucky that Yeats did just that, and wrote this fitting initiation into the poetic world. I have a feeling that as I continue growing up, it will only develop new shades of beauty and meaning.
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juxtaposition of words together:"These masterful images because complete
Grew pure in mind but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
Even though W.B. Yeats wrote his own long lyrical drama cursing St. Patrick (The Wanderings of Oisin), the monk's gift of writing was certainly well used by him. This third part of "The Circus Animals' Desertion" is one of those rare verses that is equally appealing on a surface level of pleasing lingual combinations (the only level on which I was drawn to poetry when I first discovered it) AND on a level of intellectual thought and emotion now that I have grown up a little bit. At age 10, I thought the phrase "the foul rag and bone shop of the heart" was about the coolest-sounding thing I'd ever heard. Now I think it's just about the truest idea that all grand human ideas and conceits come out of the unglamorous ephemera of our existence. Sometimes we feel like we've elevated ourselves above all that, but then we have to get humble and return to our beginnings. Not often pretty, but there it is.
I love the idea of this causal connection between the refuse of a society or an individual and its grandest self-conceptions. Both categories speak to one another, are one another in some ways. It's what makes encountering a discarded Burger King wrapper while out on a hike not only disgusting but sort of melancholic as well. The grand American vista of natural beauty is all bound up with the sweeping American bent toward self-destruction and blind disregard for the world around us, often mythologized as "individualism."
Within a given person, as Spaulding Gray has pointed out, the same applies. Gray has analyzed how our demons and neuroses are inextricably bound with our best qualities, but Yeats goes even further: our grand self-conceptions and beautiful images take their nourishment and impetus from our demons and the dirty realities of our everyday hearts, combined with our desire to make something useful, lovely or complete out of the pre-existing fragments or "garbage" that's left over after we live our quotidian lives. I love how the progression of trash in the poem steadily builds in value, causing the reader to question the worthlessness of any item listed: "old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can" (well, none of that is very valuable, the reader thinks), "old iron, old bones, old rags" (bones were once a living creature, and iron and rags items of utility), "that raving slut / Who keeps the till" (surely a living person is full of value; maybe we should take another look at that broken can). And "taking another look at that broken can" is just a less graceful way of expressing the need to "lie down where all the ladders start / In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart." Personally, I feel lucky that Yeats did just that, and wrote this fitting initiation into the poetic world. I have a feeling that as I continue growing up, it will only develop new shades of beauty and meaning.
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LibraryThing member AlanWPowers
I have given hourlong recitations of Yeats's poems, among the easiest to recall in English; for example, his tetrameters in the late "Under Ben Bulben" which contains his epitaph. I defy you to say this aloud three times without knowing most of it by heart: "Whether man die in his bed,/ Or the
By memory I still have "When you are old," his adaptation of Ronsard, "Lake Isle of Innisfree," so imitative of the water lapping the shores, in its medial caesuras, "I hear lake water lapping...Though I stand on the roadway..I shall arise and go now..." And so interesting that WBY first had a truism, "There noon is all a glimmer, and midnight a purple glow," which he reversed to the memorable, "There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon has a purple glow..." Ahh... a useful trick for writers. (My Ph.D. advisor Leonard Unger noted the influence of Meredith on Innisfree.) "The Second Coming," whose opening I said in my flight fears of landing. The problem in reciting that poem is "The worst are full of passionate intensity." I had to reduce the intensity of my aloudreading. "Sailing to Byzantium," and ohers.
I have also set to music seven of Yeats' poems, including "Brown Penny," "Lullaby," "Her Anxiety," and even "Crazy Jane talks to the Bishop." Some of these tunes, played decades ago, can be heard on my google+ page, no middle initial.
Yeats's son Michael, fathered in his late fifties, toured the US in the 70s. A friend in the Berkshires heard him recall his father mainly shooing him from the room to write or recite. Sounds accurate. (Maybe that's why Shakespeare lived in London, his kids in Stratford!)
I mentioned learning Yeats at Leonard Unger's knee, but also from Chester Anderson, Joycean and Irish specialist
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rifle knocks him dead,/ A brief parting from those dear/ Is the worst man has to fear." And his own epitaph is memorable, "Cast a cold eye/ On life, on death/ Horseman, pass by!" It is anti-conventional, since most epitaphs were written by clergy to scare the readers back to church, like this one in Pittsfield, MA: "Corruption, earth and worms/ Shall but refine this flesh..." etc. I seriously doubt the interred was consulted about that one. Yeats counters, look at this grave, and fogggetaboutit, Pass by!By memory I still have "When you are old," his adaptation of Ronsard, "Lake Isle of Innisfree," so imitative of the water lapping the shores, in its medial caesuras, "I hear lake water lapping...Though I stand on the roadway..I shall arise and go now..." And so interesting that WBY first had a truism, "There noon is all a glimmer, and midnight a purple glow," which he reversed to the memorable, "There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon has a purple glow..." Ahh... a useful trick for writers. (My Ph.D. advisor Leonard Unger noted the influence of Meredith on Innisfree.) "The Second Coming," whose opening I said in my flight fears of landing. The problem in reciting that poem is "The worst are full of passionate intensity." I had to reduce the intensity of my aloudreading. "Sailing to Byzantium," and ohers.
I have also set to music seven of Yeats' poems, including "Brown Penny," "Lullaby," "Her Anxiety," and even "Crazy Jane talks to the Bishop." Some of these tunes, played decades ago, can be heard on my google+ page, no middle initial.
Yeats's son Michael, fathered in his late fifties, toured the US in the 70s. A friend in the Berkshires heard him recall his father mainly shooing him from the room to write or recite. Sounds accurate. (Maybe that's why Shakespeare lived in London, his kids in Stratford!)
I mentioned learning Yeats at Leonard Unger's knee, but also from Chester Anderson, Joycean and Irish specialist
Show Less
LibraryThing member jddunn
Yeats has a knack for approaching emotions and situations obliquely and obscurely at first, and yet somehow hitting them right on by the time he's through. A perfect subtlety, dancing on the thin line between pathos and authenticity.
LibraryThing member harlandbrown
One of the most powerful voices in English-language poetry of the twentieth century. Lots of symbolism, some of it is quite arcane, but much is easily accessible.
LibraryThing member jarvenpa
Yeats moves in my thoughts and in my life everyday. I have two battered collections of his poems, the first given me by a now dead friend. Who else has such music, or such passion?
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
Beautiful. I regularly return to this collection and reread them at random, out loud, to savor the language - a sign of poetry done right.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
I have enjoyed the poetry of William Butler Yeats for many years as evidenced by my well-worn copy of his Complete Poems. But there is more to enjoy when considering this protean author for throughout his long life, William Butler Yeats produced important works in every literary genre, works of
"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
("Among School Children", p 105)
The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them."
There are always new things to be learned when reading and meditating on the poetry of this masterful author.
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astonishing range, energy, erudition, beauty, and skill. His early poetry is memorable and moving. His poems and plays of middle age address the human condition with language that has entered our vocabulary for cataclysmic personal and world events. "O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
("Among School Children", p 105)
The writings of his final years offer wisdom, courage, humor, and sheer technical virtuosity. T. S. Eliot pronounced Yeats "the greatest poet of our time -- certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language" and "one of the few whose history is the history of their own time, who are a part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them."
There are always new things to be learned when reading and meditating on the poetry of this masterful author.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ErinKennedy
This anthology is thorough and well-organized. Yeats is one of the greatest poets of all time, and a student of his work cannot go wrong with this anthology. The notes on his works are not intrusive but provide just enough background.
LibraryThing member Amber.Foxx
My favorite book I have ever owned.
LibraryThing member shevener
Lyrical, mystical, beautifully crafted. Yeats not only spoke to the his time and place, he transcended.
LibraryThing member unclebob53703
My favorite poet, and the ultimate volume of his poetry.
LibraryThing member ChrisNewton
The best of the best.
LibraryThing member unclebob53703
Beautiful edition of my favorite poet. It's missing the added poems of W.B. Yeats The Poems, so I guess I'm keeping that hefty volume too. This one features illustrations by his brother, which are quite fine.
LibraryThing member brakketh
Not my favourite recent poetry reads though still very evocative in places.
Awards
Language
Original publication date
1974
Physical description
xxxi, 1, 544 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
0099723506 / 9780099723509