During these years of Yeats’s esoterica Ireland was rife with internal strife. He was equally firm in adhering to his self-image as an artist. In the remaining half of the cycle, physical existence gradually falls away, until it disappears completely at the new moon, whereupon the cycle begins again. Despite the author’s often keen awareness of his physical decline, the last 15 years of his life were marked by extraordinary vitality and an appetite for life. This transformation in his poetic style can be traced in his first three collections of the 20th century: In the Seven Woods (1903), The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910), and Responsibilities (1914). Jeff Gordinier and Rosie Schapp discuss poetry over a few cocktails. Buy The Collected Poems of W.B.Yeats (Wordsworth Poetry Library) New edition by W.B. The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), poems numbered 40 through 76. He accepted a six-year appointment to the senate of the Irish Free State in December 1922, a time when rebels were kidnapping government figures and burning their homes. Eliot and Pound. In “Yeats as an Example?” an essay in Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978, the prominent Irish poet Seamus Heaney commended Yeats for continually altering and refining his poetic craftsmanship. O’Leary had a keen enthusiasm for Irish books, music, and ballads, and he encouraged young writers to adopt Irish subjects. In the summer of 1897 the author enjoyed his first stay at Coole Park, the County Galway estate of Lady Augusta Gregory. This is a list of all works by Irish poet and dramatist W. B. Yeats’s allegiance to poetic tradition did not extend, however, to what he considered an often obscure, overly learned use of literary and cultural traditions by T.S. Auden (who praised Yeats as the savior of English lyric poetry), Stephen Spender, Theodore Roethke, and Philip Larkin. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. The Rose (1893), poems numbered 17 through 39, The Wind Among the Reeds (1899), poems numbered 40 through 76, In the Seven Woods (1904), poems numbered 77 through 90, The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910), poems numbered 91 through 111, Responsibilities (1914), poems numbered 112 through 142, The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), poems numbered 143 through 188, Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), poems numbered 189 through 203, The Tower (1928), poems numbered 204 through 239, The Winding Stairs and Other Poems (1933), poems numbered 240 through 303, Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems (1935), poems numbered 304 through 320, New Poems (1938), poems numbered 321 through 355, Last Poems (1938-1939), poems numbered 356 through 374, Narrative and Dramatic (1889-1923), poems numbered 375 through 382, Warren Wedin Yeats gave eloquent expression to this idea of the mask in a group of essays, Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918): “I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one’s self.” This notion can be found in a wide variety of Yeats’s poems. There he wrote poems, plays, novels, and short stories—all with Irish characters and scenes. He belonged to the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority that had controlled the economic, political, social, and cultural life of Ireland since at least the end of the 17th century. During the first decade of the 20th century Yeats was extremely active in the management of the Abbey Theatre company. The Easter Rising contributed to Yeats’s eventual decision to reside in Ireland rather than England, and his marriage to Hyde-Lees in 1917 further strengthened that resolve. Also author of Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, 1918. William Butler Yeats Seminar Homepage ", “When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats, In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz, Ribh Considers Christian Love Insufficient, To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing, (And translator, with Shri Purohit Swami). Works sometimes appear twice if parts of new editions or significantly revised. His brilliant rhetorical accomplishments, strengthened by his considerable powers of rhythm and poetic phrase, have earned wide praise from readers and, especially, from fellow poets, including W.H. The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910), poems numbered 91 through 111.
Yeats remained an active member of the Golden Dawn for 32 years, becoming involved in its direction at the turn of the century and achieving the coveted sixth grade of membership in 1914, the same year that his future wife, Georgiana Hyde-Lees, also joined the society. Only four days after the wedding, his bride began what would be a lengthy experiment with the psychic phenomenon called automatic writing, in which her hand and pen presumably served as unconscious instruments for the spirit world to send information. Yeats further likened these historical cycles to the 28-day lunar cycle, contending that physical existence grows steadily until it reaches a maximum at the full moon, which Yeats described as perfect beauty. His pose as “The Wild Old Wicked Man” (the title of one of his poems) and his poetical revitalization was reflected in the title of his 1938 volume New Poems. Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc, New York, NY 1956, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics, The Works of William Blake: Poetic, Symbolic and Critical, In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz, The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=W._B._Yeats_bibliography&oldid=986215046, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 30 October 2020, at 14:04. William Butler Yeats is widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Yeats found that within each 2,000-year era, emblematic moments occurred at the midpoints of the 1000-year halves. (William Butler) Yeats (1865–1939), winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature and a foremost figure in 20th-century literature.Works sometimes appear twice if parts of new editions or significantly revised. There he devised, with Lady Gregory and her neighbor Edward Martyn, plans for promoting an innovative, native Irish drama. Free kindle book and epub digitized and proofread by Project Gutenberg. Here are the opening poem lyrics excerpted from some of the best William Butler Yeats poetry. For example, in “A Coat,” written in 1912, Yeats derided his 1890s poetic style, saying that he had once adorned his poems with a coat “covered with embroideries / Out of old mythologies.” The poem concludes with a brash announcement: “There’s more enterprise / In walking naked.” This departure from a conventional 19th-century manner disappointed his contemporary readers, who preferred the pleasant musicality of such familiar poems as “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” which he wrote in 1890. It’s going to prove difficult to restrict our choices to just ten of Yeats’s greatest poems, as there are bound to … How the conflict of a nation was captured by a politically reluctant poet. In proud moods he could speak in the stern voice of his famous epitaph, written within six months of his death, which concludes his poem “Under Ben Bulben”: “Cast a cold eye / On life, on death.