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Widely recognized as one of the nobles of twentieth century poetry, Yeats was born in Dublin, where he was raised within an educated and creative environment. His father was the painter John Butler Yeats, and William also studied art, both in Dublin and London. During holiday, his family would often visit Sligo, in the west country. The rich traditional lore of the region was to prove a strong influence upon the poet for the remainder of his life. |
At the age of twenty two, William moved with his family to England, where he lived for nearly a decade, returning to Ireland in 1896. While his early works are strongly rooted in traditional lore and symbolism, Yeats became deeply involved with the politics of his era and much of his later work centered around themes of Irish nationalism. During the nineteen twenties the writer became politician and served in the Senate of the newly formed Irish Free State. In 1923 William Butler Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Hosting of the Sidhe
(1899)
The host is riding from Knocknare
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ‘twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away.
Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form written by Helen Vendler explores the form behind Yeatsian lyrical poetry. She says:
We cannot really appreciate Yeats’s poems by attending only to what they say. We must also understand the logic behind their style, the reasons that Yeats chose to write a sonnet instead of a ballad, or to make some poems nimble and rhythmic but others halting and dissonant. As Vendler rightly points out, few critics are willing to think about a poet’s entire career in these terms, to follow what she calls “the creative impulse and its elaboration” from youthful experiments to mature achievements. And even fewer possess the historical awareness to write persuasively, as Vendler does, about the impressive amplitude and versatility of the lyric form in English.
The fundamental difference between rhetoric and poetry, according to Yeats, is that rhetoric is the expression of one’s quarrels with others while poetry is the expression (and sometimes the resolution) of one’s quarrel with oneself. This is where Helen Vendler’s Our Secret Discipline begins. Through exquisite attention to outer and inner forms, Vendler explores the most inventive reaches of the poet’s mind. This book is a space-clearing gesture, an attempt to write about lyric forms in Yeats in unprecedented and comprehensive ways. The secret discipline of the poet is his vigilant attention to forms - whether generic, structural, or metrical. Yeats explores the potential of such forms to give shape and local habitation to volatile thoughts and feelings. Helen Vendler remains focused on questions of singular importance: why did Yeats cast his poems into the widely differing forms they ultimately took? Can we understand Yeats’s poetry better if we pay attention to inner and outer lyric form? Chapters of the book take up many Yeatsian ventures, such as the sonnet, the lyric sequence, paired poems, blank verse, and others. With elegance and precision, Vendler offers brilliant insights into the creative process, and speculates on Yeats’s aims as he writes and rewrites some of the most famous poems in modern literature.
Source
Amazon
