What does /lit/ think of William Butler Yeats's poetry?
Quite good. Poetic powers waxed with age while still being formidable and distinct at all/most stages of his career. A little bit too much "muh Ireland" for my tastes but that's hardly unique to him.
Interesting plays BTW, very brief and poetic. Check out Purgatory.
>>7747000
A budding buddhist and amateur atheist.
best english poet. supreme is his use of beautiful language, use of a style that is at times difficult but never inscrutable and is a joy rather than a chore to try and interpret, vivid in his dealing with lose and tragedy, able to comment on contemporary world events and trends without being pretentious or any of it feeling shoe-horned and in a way that maintains its relevance for all time.
>>7747000
Most consistent poet in the English language. Incredibly rich and varied bibliography: I have a copy of his collected poems that I turn to in times of need and always uncover a pearl of wisdom or just some pure, unfiltered aesthetic brilliance that makes everything better.
People who decry him as a fascist or a crank are intellectually and emotionally stunted. It's the desire for transcendence underlies everything he wrote. In order to find a way to something 'other', something above and beyond the mundane world of time and space, he mined the veins of everything from the blood-stirring call of nationalism to the occultist tomfoolery of ancestral projection, and his poetry is a transcript of his failed attempts to escape the limits imposed upon us by the material world by resorting to such eclectic extremes. This does not mean he was either a racist or a charlatan, only that he held any experience as worth having if it could give him a leg-up in his quest to transcend mortal constraints.
A wise but foolish man.
>>7747060
I came in this thread to say just that anon. Beautifully put and I applaud you.
William Butler Yeats is a great Poet and I also use a collection of his poems in my times of need.
>>7747273
>he got the Nobel prize
>I'm glad to learn that someone else likes him too
>>7747060
quality post
>>7747012
t. Vladi Nabi
>>7747296
I don't leave my house.
>>7749307
So?
>>7747000
I had never been fond of poetry until a few years ago when I read "Sailing to Byzantium" on a red-eye flight. It really got me to appreciate poetry and see how I had made myself willingly blind to such beauty.
>>7747000
Perfect
>>7747060
>Most consistent poet in the English language.
I used to think so too, but as I get olderi'm oldand the more poetry I readI've read a lotI think more and more that the opposite is true in Yeats' case. He's really inconsistent. From his early years with the almost romantic poems, the unpolished fairy tales with clumsy sonic quality, the boyish outlook and rhymes, and then the transition to the modernist fashion, with the topical references and allusions and the conceits and the seeming abandonment of strict metre.
And then the quality, from line to line even, just seems so hit or miss. Line to line, or line AND line, as in in reference to one another, apparently out of place or displeasing to the ear-not-tin..
I don't know, Yeats is good. Yeats is great. But, consistency I don't think is something he carried as I read more and more and more.
>>7747000
Absolutely first-rate.
