In contemporary poetry, another author of English expression appears, in the case of Irish origin, which always translated when he began writing in the late nineteenth century. Nothing is taboo; all pros and cons to the taste of pen philosophy in poetry may be the memory of the Druids, the Celts ancestors of all Western Europeans. The herring fishing that continues to be made in Northern Europe as it always was, maybe the prior John of socks and collar broke, the memory of classical antiquity, t...

Breathless, familiar whisperings....I could feel them warm on my cheek.

The last stroke of midnight dies.All day in the one chairFrom dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I haverangedIn rambling talk with an image of air:Vague memories, nothing but memories.— W.B. Yeats, “Broken Dreams”, The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)From the depths of anything mysterious and unfathomable, here come bursts of poetry moving across the years, making impressions with an assortment of intensities and kaleidoscopic visualizations: W.B. Yeats and his unique art. This collection includes vers...

When You Are OldWhen you are old and gray and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty with love false or true;But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing barsMurmur, a little sadly, how love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face a...

Sound file of this review here: http://soundcloud.com/tremcc/review-o...I’ve always been particularly fond of Yeats. Recently I’ve been told twice in quick succession he was more than just a little rightwing politically and that this ought to put me off him. The problem is that getting turned off poets just because they are rightwing wouldn’t really leave me all that many poets to read.I tend to buy my oldest daughter books of selected poems for Christmas – I’m not quite sure why or how it even

I’m always surprised when I don’t love a well-known poet, and equally surprised when I discover an unknown poet whose work is miraculous. That’s just crazy-stupid, and I should know better.Well now I feel I’ve given Yeats a good try. I read a little about him--learned that he was proudly Irish, believed in the Irish Nationalist cause, and that he considered himself an artist who valued craftsmanship and symbolism. I took my time with his poems, and amidst so much in a style I didn’t appreciate,

عين باردة تحدّق في الحياةوفي الموتوفارس يعبر بينهما ــــــــــ ذلك الفارس المغموس بكليته في بحور الشعر هو ويليام بتلر ييتسالشاعر الأيرلندي الممسوس بجنون من نوع خاصوالمشدود إلى عالم الغرائبيات الساحر بكل ما أوتي من عبقرية ومنطق يتخطى حدود البشرييتس صنع من الشعر جناحين عملاقينوطار بهما محلقاحاملا قراءة من كل العصور معهأنت تقرأ ييتسأنت لم تعد على الأرض[image error]----------------------- If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,Whether to look upon your monument(I wonder if the builder has been p...

112th book of 2020 – officially beaten my last year total.This is a tough one to review; there is no doubt that Yeats is a great writer (there are plenty of good lines in these poems), but after ‘living’ with Yeats for over a month, reading this on and off, a little at a time, I can say that mostly I was left unimpressed by his work. This is a large collection, with over two-hundred of his poems from his writing years, 1888-1939.The feel of Yeats’ work is interesting, and, as I have said in prev...

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,And nodding by the fire, take down this book,And slowly read, and dream of the soft lookYour eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,And loved your beauty with love false or true;But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing barsMurmur, a little sadly, how love fledAnd paced upon the mountains overheadAnd hid his face amid a crowd of s...

"For he would be thinking of loveTill the stars had run awayAnd the shadows eaten the moon."I am perhaps a very selective reader of Yeats' poetry. I do not like all of his poems, but some of them I love and cherish with all of my heart. Perhaps this is due to the fact that in order to understand the majority of his poems an extensive knowledge of Irish culture and mythology is required - which I sadly lack. And also, these poems are meant to be heard, and ideally to be read aloud in a soft Irish...

I feel so guilty because I want to like Yeats but while there are one or two amazing poems, like 'Leda and the Swan' and 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death', or one or two that are very interesting and strikingly expressed, like 'The Second Coming' or 'The Circus Animal's Desertion', overall, I find Yeats boring a lot of the time and a bit repugnant for his conservative nature, such as his nationalism. I found it hard to concentrate and understand a lot of his poems and I didn't really come away...

«Leave unchangedThe hands that I have kissed,For old sake’s sake»💔💔💔

The poems I liked, I really liked. However, there were quite a few that I didn't much care for and found difficult to understand. I do appreciate that Yeat's poems must have spoke more to Irish people at the time of writing, especially the poems which referenced Parnell, Irish nationalism etc. I also think I would have enjoyed the poems more with more knowledge of mythology as a lot of the poems do reference mythical characters, some that I've never heard of.Two of my favourite poems from this b...

Man And The Echo ‘Man. In a cleft that's christened AltUnder broken stone I haltAt the bottom of a pitThat broad noon has never lit,And shout a secret to the stone.All that I have said and done,Now that I am old and ill,Turns into a question tillI lie awake night after nightAnd never get the answers right.Did that play of mine send outCertain men the English shot?Did words of mine put too great strainOn that woman's reeling brain?Could my spoken words have checkedThat whereby a house lay wrecked...

Our long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait, For God has bid them share an equal fate; And when at last defeated in His wars, They have gone down under the same white stars, We shall no longer hear the little cry Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.I was struck yesterday, September 1, by the dates of Yeats' birth and death. 1865 and 1939. My pause was but a series of moments, my thoughts dragging themselves across the rocks of history, reading and a world too full of weeping. Shou...

A collection of W.B. Yeats's poetry that spans from his early career up until his death. Somewhat oblique and heavy in allusion, I won't pretend to understand what Yeats is talking about most of the time. He had a strong reverence for the mystical and esoteric. Constant references to classical and Irish mythology ensure his poems are frequently rooted in the past, even when he is talking about current events. He is at once a modernist, classicist, and romanticist, deeply sentimental, rarely anyt...

And what if excess of love bewildered them till they died?

Not much experience with poetry, so this was a bit of a tough read for me. Many poems in this collection tell me about the the process of aging, looking back, decay and thinking abouth the dreams and idleness of youth, where everything seemed possible.The concetration needed to fully grasp a poem proved an interesting excercise for me. I noticed that I sometimes read "lazy" and allow my thoughts to wander. It was a confronting experience.

Having only ever read Yeats "easier" and often anthologised poems I hadn't realised how difficult much of his work could be. Well, at least I learnt some Irish history and mythology.And here is one of his that even I could understand, although given his Celtic roots shouldn't this be about redheads rather than blondes?For Anne Gregory"Never shall a young man,Thrown into despairBy those great honey coloured Ramparts at your ear,Love you for yourself aloneAnd not your yellow hair.""But I shall get...

I bought this about five years ago for a project and have just now gotten around to reading it. I started it feeling very excited - Yeats is so lyrical and imaginative and so obviously enamored with nature and myths. His poetry is so beautiful. But I think as I continued through the book, I found it harder to understand a lot of his poems. Many of them seemed to go all over the place or refer to myths and gods I am unfamiliar with. It made reading the poetry more like a chore. All in all, the po...