TS Heavy Hitters Poll #1: Yeats vs. Shakespeare

is there a good selection of Yeats' best lyrics? I'm reading through the Collected in full, & there's a lot in the early volumes that seems... unnecessary

then again, it could just be the actual formatting that's throwing me: giant font + poems starting in midpage = the shorter, pithy stuff tends to get lost in the shuffle; combine that with the frustrating similarity of the titles & I end up rereading a whole volume of poems because I can't spot the ones I liked when I'm paging through :/

the recent separate issue of 'the tower' is nice

yeah I've got that & 'The Winding Stair' in separate volumes (nice cuz they're both good books & the covers are pretty). would love to see this get the same reissued-facsimile treatment:
http://www.themargins.net/images2/bib/B/BL/BL17_228.jpg

ooh, i didn't know there was another one of those

Depends. How are you defining "early"? No Yeats is complete without "The Sorrow of Fergus" and "Adam's Curse."

you referring to "Fergus and the Druid" or another poem? definitely "early", but perhaps a "dramatic fragment" rather than a "lyric"...

"Adam's Curse" = early-middle Yeats?

I've been reading Harold Bloom's Yeats study in tandem with the Collected, & he draws the line right at the turn of the century, which is convenient; but unlike Bloom, I find much to admire in the 'middle poems' of Responsibilities (1914) & The Green Helmet (1910). I'm somewhat less charmed by 1904's In the Seven Woods, so it's simple enough to shunt that one off to the early track.

rosenthal's 'selected poems and four plays' is the standard, right, or used to be? i feel like i may have been recommended it on this board. this thread, possibly.

i just cant with yeats tho in general

Responsibilitie would be my cutoff point, and I'd include several of its poems.

That Bloom book is excellent on among other things Yeats' indebtedness to Shelley.

xp yeah I was just looking at the Rosenthal... it's still like 300 pages tho! & I already have all the plays

I feel like my appreciation of a poet depends heavily on my ability to carry a book around with me for several weeks, reading & rereading during my little snatches of downtime. pocket-sized facsimile editions of The Tower & The Winding Stair have made some inroads towards the later Yeats, but if I want to dip into The Wind Among the Reeds I'm stuck lugging around a 600-page brick :/

are you reading this thread on a printout?

who says he wants to appreciate us

... well now that you mention it, I do appreciate that counter-zing on my behalf :)

it wasn't a zing I'm trying to shock u into happiness get a kindle

no thanks, I'm a sentimental traditionalist & a champion of conservative values (I'm reading Yeats ffs)

this is the same Yeats with the tombshagging and the whatnot now

Better still, hand the Yeats-loaded Kindle to a gifted reader-aloud of poetry and have them insinuate the words into your brain through your ears. That way you needn't encumber your hands and may even close your eyes restfully.

think of how many monkey testicles you'd be able to afford thanks the savings a kindle brings

The benefits are endless.

interesting that nobody talks abt shakespeare ITT anymore, interesting and telling imo Yeats in the long run at a canto imo

shakespeare in a first round KO thx

Yeats after the fall

ive had the first four lines of wild swans at Cooke in my head all day idk why.

how do the rhythms even work. idk.

anyway, 150th bday this week rte running a course of events across TV and radio to look fwd to

how do the rhythms even work. idk.

Yeats employed a superb bassist

How do I shot Yeats through guitar amp?

giving yis both a dry downturning mouth rn

On R3 also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xq6b0

Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

God almighty

√

interesting that nobody talks abt shakespeare ITT anymore, interesting and telling imo Yeats in the long run at a canto imo

― post you had fecund thoughts about (darraghmac), Thursday, April 9, 2015 11:39 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*folds arms, raises eyebrows at shakespeare*

no way of comparing...

i was gonna read Deidre, one of the plays, this week.

I'm easily riled but It's been a while since I've seen something that's riled me this much. This is an object lesson on hot to not read a great poem. And how to dress badly to boot. What on earth is she doing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0VuBD-yxVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPB_17rbNXk

I've already had that misfortune^. Not the whole thing, obviously.

"Watch this video on youtube. Playback on other sites has been disabled by this owner"

Think I've seen Shaw read Shakespeare on TV. That's when you know your voice is the best voice.

I know not what the younger dreams --
Some vague Utopia -- and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.

I read a page of a yeats short story aloud yesterday and jeez there was a guy who needed the breaks forced onto him. Rhythm and cadence was there but sentences were running sevenclause deep.

yet his Autobiographies is beautiful, and so is a meditational reverie called "Per Amica Silentia Lunae."

I dont doubt it, the 'aloud' part was what caused me the problems.

anyone read yeats' plays? the collection i've got has "calvary" and "purgatory"

Yes. Read The Words Upon the Windowpane for realistic drama, Purgatory in his spare Noh phase.

oh these are super short too

A Deep-sworn Vow

OTHERS because you did not keep
That deep-sworn vow have been friends of mine;
Yet always when I look death in the face,
When I clamber to the heights of sleep,
Or when I grow excited with wine,
Suddenly I meet your face.

ughhhh

stop soul-reading me, WBY

WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your 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 bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Always enjoyed the hints of malice/goes in that one