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Poetry would sound so much better in an (probably drunken) Irish lilt.My first major exposure to Yeats was wonderful. But by the same token, limited. Reading the notes in the back of this collection of poems and plays (I skipped the plays, they didn't appeal), makes me realize that my affinity for poetry is more primal and base than the "professional" critic. I prefer poems and lines that punch me in the gut. And many times Yeats does this to full effect. I'm less concerned with the "analysis" o...
I couldn't find the exact e-book called just "Poems" from "Gutenberg" project with some plays and other poetry, which I am currently reading, but this one seems to be the closest to it with its content and volume.So, I just read "The Countess Cathleen" and several poems about Fergus and The Druid and Cuchulain and his son ("The Death of Cuchulain"), and I have to say this was one of the most absorbing reads I have ever had in my life. I would never expect that I will enjoy reading a play so much...
I have always been more acquainted with unorthodox and “avant-garde” literature. Lately I have been going back and reading some of the more traditional classics. I must say, at first I wanted to pull my eyes out while reading Yeats. He definitely has an unhealthy obsession with swift and although Keats, who as a poet is good, I feel he draws too much in his early writings from the deficient pathos I find in his works. Therefore as a self proclaimed “neo-romantic” I struggled through his early wr...
It's been close to twenty years since I picked up Yeats. I was reminded of the tremendous beauty of his work when a few years ago, I came across the final verse of "The Second Coming" at a photo exhibit at the Met. I found the same poem a few weeks ago and decided to purchase this book. I breezed through it and it brought me back to my college days studying his likes and that of Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, and Edna St Vincent Millay. Poetry as they wrote it is a lost art, perhaps even a lost lang...
WBY is probably my favorite poet (it's close w/ Keats and Eliot). I think this collection gives a good intro to his works. My personal favorites are the Byzantium poems, which contemplate the role of the artist v/v death (cf. Shakespeare's sonnets).
Many was the dreamy sigh I spent over this collection of poems and plays. Oh, darling William, keeper of my collegiate heart!
There’s no doubt about it: Yeats was a great poet, who wrote great poetry. I really enjoyed reading his poetry like this, it gave me a better feel for his life’s work as a whole. There were quite a few poems in here that I really liked and will be going back to, particularly some of his romantic poems. It helped that I already know a bit about his lover, Maude Gonne. Overall, his diction, and the flow of his poetry, can be very enchanting and beautiful.
*read for british poetry class*
This elegant collection of the poet's work takes us from his early, idealistic times, to his final days and mortally aware literature. Yeats's poetry is hyper-representative of Ireland, oftentimes exhibiting anthropomorphic figures of the country in his tale-like sing-song rhyming structures and poetic plots. Interspersed throughout, though, are his heavy Irish revolutionary thoughts, his lover's laments (damn you, Maude Gonne), and his pensive final summation of life and art.There are some trul...
Some quite excellent poetry, some not so much. Reminds me some of T S Eliot. Many excellent one-or-two-liners in the middle of mediocre work. Lots of literary allusions, philosophical thoughts, historical mentions and theological stuff.
For the past several years I've had various books of poetry sitting by my chair that I usually read a poem or two from late in the evening. It's a habit I've gotten into that seems to ease any tensions from the day. I've just recently been adding them to my Goodreads list as I complete them. I think the reason I hadn't up to now is that I really don't know what to say, just that I like them or I don't. I just don't have the intellect to properly analyze them. Anyway, this is one I completed last...
A nice collection from the last great poet in my mind. Although, I will say, I am immune to the charms of his gaelic/irish mythology inspired poetry.
“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”-Yeatshttp://www.online-literature.com/yeat...O Do Not Love Too LongSWEETHEART, do not love too long:I loved long and long,And grew to be out of fashionLike an old song.All through the years of our youthNeither could have knownTheir own thought from the other's,We were so much at one.But O, in a minute she changed -O do not love too long,Or you will grow out of fashionLike an old song. The Lover T...
This collection was my introduction to Yeats, the Irish author of gorgeous and powerful verse that has deeply moved me for two decades. I'm forever grateful my girlfriend (now my wife) bought it for me.
Oh Yeats, Oh Yeats,Your words poured into my headAs water through a sieve;You bade Swift undead,Mourned Ireland's plight,And waited the soul's reprieve.But neither verse nor playCould hold my weary eye.So get thee behind me,Upon the shelf I send you back;Get thee behind me,There are other books to crack.
Yeats’ poetry is elegant, delicate. I have not been properly educated on poetry in any form, sub Paradise Lost and some meagre attempts at Shakespeare. This semester I finally was introduced to Yeats, Eliot, and Shaw (mostly plays, though Eliot argued that drama was a form of poetic expression) and I am in love, to put it simply. The dissonant struggle between life and art that Yeats tackles in his poetry throughout his life makes the collection one brimming with universality, convenience, yet p...
I'm actually not reading this much now so maybe it shouldn't be in my currently reading, but I had a couple weeks where I had really bad insomnia and was reading this to help me get to sleep. I always had a vague idea that I probably liked Yeats but wasn't actually very familiar with his work, and then I read the intro to this book and I'm glad I did because it's basically like, "Yeats makes gazillions of references and allusions to super obscure things that you aren't gonna know, and neither do...
still the best reading edition.
I read this collection too fast, a couple poems a night just before going to sleep, and that's not the way to read Yeats. You need resources nearby for looking up his references (unless you have a really strong background in classical literature, Irish mythology, and the past century and a half or so of the history of Ireland) to fully appreciate many of the poems in this collection.Nevertheless, much of what you can understand and some of what you can't, you are stirred by and love.
One poem: Adam's Curse.