Not for me. It's the one where the bestiality comes on a bit strong. Once, when I went to Sankeys in the early 00s, shit night, crap pills, too busy, rubbish music, too many mancs, we got back to my mates house with some other people and they put some porn on. It was very hardcore from the get go, then the animals turned up. And yes, a pig. I fell asleep on a cold floor and had to go to hospital the next day to have a nebuliser cos my asthma came on
Yeats
- Thread starter Corpsey
- Start date
Not for me. It's the one where the bestiality comes on a bit strong. Once, when I went to Sankeys in the early 00s, shit night, crap pills, too busy, rubbish music, too many mancs, we got back to my mates house with some other people and they put some porn on. It was very hardcore from the get go, then the animals turned up. And yes, a pig. I fell asleep on a cold floor and had to go to hospital the next day to have a nebuliser cos my asthma came on
luka
Well-known member
Northerners
Yeah I've no idea, one of them is one of my best mates, I'll ask him sometime. It mustve been his video cos it was his house. Dunno. Another time we went out, and when we came back they put on an MMA video, with a guy we knew getting absolutely fucking pummelled. That night, I fell asleep, missed the train back to London
I get confused with the yeats, there's two of them right? And wb is the golden dawn one? Tony Wilson was a fan? Or was it Keats he liked? I think I've tried reading a notebook or something he did, a dream diary maybe. Didn't get very far. What's the best thing he's done. I've heard that falconer can't find the falcon line, is that him? Thought it was Eliot. Sorry.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
There's only one famous poet Yeats (his father and brother were famous painters) — and yes he was in the Golden Dawn. He was one of the leading members of the "Irish Literary Revival" movement, and in his early poetry is thoroughly immersed in (mostly Celtic) mythology.
His background was (to simplify matters) wealthy - though only distantly aristocratic - protestant, and he was disdainful towards the bourgeoisie middle-class and urban working-class (and sentimental towards the rural peasantry). Particularly in his earlier poetry, he seeks an escape from a post-Romantic world (and from his own failures in politics, romance, etc.) in mythology and (to our modern sensibilities) hackneyed "faery" imagery. This is why the 19th century Yeats is grouped with, for example, the Pre-Raphealites.
What's perhaps most interesting about Yeats, though, is that he developed — from one of the last 19th century poets to one of the first 20th century poets, and not just chronologically. Meeting Ezra Pound was undoubtedly influential here, though Pound thought Yeats was the greatest living poet (afaik) before they ever met. He began to write more about contemporary life and political events ('Easter 1916' could be seen as a turning point for Yeats, as he acknowledges the heroism of the Easter Rising, having formerly dismissed the rebels mindless — they were "lower" class and catholic), and to pare down his formerly quite flowery language to be stark, bare, skeletal — all while sustaining a "grand" manner which he was able to pull off (most of the time) without seeming entirely archaic or ridiculous.
The mysticism remained throughout his life (the woman he married delighted him by revealing a talent for "automatic writing"), and he wrote a book (which Luka loves) "A Vision" which outlines his highly complex theory of history and symbology (recurring cycles of history, the famous "gyre" as mentioned in "The Second Coming", which is the poem you alluded to Catalog). Mysticism was very in fashion in the 19th century, no doubt in reaction to the steady erosion of belief in Christianity — and the despair that accompanied a purely materialist view of things.
To get an inkling of how in-depth and complicated these theories are http://www.yeatsvision.com/Blake.html
Without an understanding of these theories, Yeats's poetry is impossible to fully understand — hence me not really understanding much of it myself! But I got into Yeats reading in near-total ignorance, and found myself mystified and transported in equal measure by the best of them. His use of language is often sublime, and the way dreamlike imagery rubs up against a matter-of-fact and jaundiced view of life is uncanny. He's a Romantic for Moderns. (Whereas Eliot, say, is thoroughly unRomantic.)
In terms of where to start, I would say the penguin selected poems is ideal, as then you can read poetry from different stages in his career (including poems which he rewrote). His most esteemed collection is "The Tower" — other great ones include "Responsibilities" and "The Wild Swans at Coole".
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Corpsey
bandz ahoy
This is Ezra Pound on "the later Yeats":
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/65892/responsibilities-by-w-b-yeats
Pound draws attention to "this quality of hard light" in his later poetry which is somehow the perfect way to describe it...
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/65892/responsibilities-by-w-b-yeats
Pound draws attention to "this quality of hard light" in his later poetry which is somehow the perfect way to describe it...
craner
Beast of Burden
Thank goodness. I thought it was some weird pornographic thing. I was too scared to Google it.
You are not missing much
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
some to read
'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' is an example of Yeats's earlier poetry, and I believe is still one of his most popular and anthologised poems. It's a melodic melancholic poem about yearning for the peace and tranquillity of nature while living in the city (west Ireland very powerfully symbolic in this regard, see also Joyce's "The Dead").
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree
'The Second Coming' is probably his most famous and (consciously or not) quoted poems. Even if you don't understand it (I can't say I do entirely), once read it can never be forgotten — which is probably the ultimate compliment a poet can receive.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
'Sailing to Byzantium' is another very famous Yeats poem. "This is no country for old men..." A metaphorical journey from youth to age, and from the impermanence of life to the permanence of poetry. (I actually prefer "Byzantium" to this but this is more famous and more easily grasped.)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium
'Leda and the Swan' is a sonnet which (like 'The Second Coming') articulates Yeats's vision of eternal historical recurrence. It links the myth of Zeus (in the form of a swan) impregnating Leda with the Trojan war, the fall of Troy and - subliminally - the virgin birth of Christ. For my money one of his absolute best.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43292/leda-and-the-swan
'The Magi' (which Pound singles out for praise) does the same sort of thing with the story of the nativity. The miraculous beginning, the horrific, violent end. Shows what I loved as I got into Yeats — the mysterious, gnomic quality of it. You read it quickly and wonder what that was all about — but you want to know, because it seems like it must be tremendously significant.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12892/the-magi
'Easter 1916' is a poem about the Easter Rising, an armed republican rebellion against British rule which was brutally put down, with the leaders executed for treason. One of these doomed leaders was Major John Macbride, ex-husband of the (unrequited) love of Yeats's life, the aristocratic revolutionary Maud Gonne — Yeats hated Macbride for the way he had treated his wife and daughter, but found himself compelled to acknowledge the heroism of MacBride's death in this poem, in which Yeats confronts and acknowledges his former inability to perceive the heroism of "common" people before the rebellion had thrown his supposedly lofty dismissal of violent action into stark relief. As said upthread, a turning-point poem for Yeats.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43289/easter-1916
'Paudeen', one of my favourite poems by Yeats, traces a similar mental trajectory from snobbish dismissal ('Paudeen' being a dismissive word for catholics - 'little Patrick'). Having closely examined this poem, I have come to believe that the fragmented, awkward diction of the opening 5 lines reflects the disordered mindset of the offended speaker as he stumbles through the countryside, which - upon hearing the curlews speaking - melts away into the most sublimely "poetic" diction, reflective of the transcendence that Yeats believed poetry should make manifest. The last line is one of the more obviously beautiful lines Yeats ever wrote, but would seem maybe a little indulgent and overpoetic without the rough-and-tumble of what leads up to it. And the sentiment is beautiful, too — and points to the transcendent dimension in Yeats, where material events are often masking some deeper, unified reality.
Paudeen
INDIGNANT at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.
'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' is an example of Yeats's earlier poetry, and I believe is still one of his most popular and anthologised poems. It's a melodic melancholic poem about yearning for the peace and tranquillity of nature while living in the city (west Ireland very powerfully symbolic in this regard, see also Joyce's "The Dead").
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree
'The Second Coming' is probably his most famous and (consciously or not) quoted poems. Even if you don't understand it (I can't say I do entirely), once read it can never be forgotten — which is probably the ultimate compliment a poet can receive.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
'Sailing to Byzantium' is another very famous Yeats poem. "This is no country for old men..." A metaphorical journey from youth to age, and from the impermanence of life to the permanence of poetry. (I actually prefer "Byzantium" to this but this is more famous and more easily grasped.)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium
'Leda and the Swan' is a sonnet which (like 'The Second Coming') articulates Yeats's vision of eternal historical recurrence. It links the myth of Zeus (in the form of a swan) impregnating Leda with the Trojan war, the fall of Troy and - subliminally - the virgin birth of Christ. For my money one of his absolute best.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43292/leda-and-the-swan
'The Magi' (which Pound singles out for praise) does the same sort of thing with the story of the nativity. The miraculous beginning, the horrific, violent end. Shows what I loved as I got into Yeats — the mysterious, gnomic quality of it. You read it quickly and wonder what that was all about — but you want to know, because it seems like it must be tremendously significant.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12892/the-magi
'Easter 1916' is a poem about the Easter Rising, an armed republican rebellion against British rule which was brutally put down, with the leaders executed for treason. One of these doomed leaders was Major John Macbride, ex-husband of the (unrequited) love of Yeats's life, the aristocratic revolutionary Maud Gonne — Yeats hated Macbride for the way he had treated his wife and daughter, but found himself compelled to acknowledge the heroism of MacBride's death in this poem, in which Yeats confronts and acknowledges his former inability to perceive the heroism of "common" people before the rebellion had thrown his supposedly lofty dismissal of violent action into stark relief. As said upthread, a turning-point poem for Yeats.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43289/easter-1916
'Paudeen', one of my favourite poems by Yeats, traces a similar mental trajectory from snobbish dismissal ('Paudeen' being a dismissive word for catholics - 'little Patrick'). Having closely examined this poem, I have come to believe that the fragmented, awkward diction of the opening 5 lines reflects the disordered mindset of the offended speaker as he stumbles through the countryside, which - upon hearing the curlews speaking - melts away into the most sublimely "poetic" diction, reflective of the transcendence that Yeats believed poetry should make manifest. The last line is one of the more obviously beautiful lines Yeats ever wrote, but would seem maybe a little indulgent and overpoetic without the rough-and-tumble of what leads up to it. And the sentiment is beautiful, too — and points to the transcendent dimension in Yeats, where material events are often masking some deeper, unified reality.
Paudeen
INDIGNANT at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn-trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry.
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