Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
It's Yeats. I had the help of a professor to get me through this volume, thankfully, because you need to know a lot about Irish history and Yeats' philosophy to even barely understand his poetry. I was reminded of one of my favorite Yeats poems recently when I read it in "The Lake of Dead Languages" by Goodman. Here's the last stanza:"I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,I he...
This is designed as the text for a college course on Yeats, with of course some great poems, a lot of other poems that do nothing for me, snippets from some of his drama and prose, and (about a third of the book) extracts from critical work about Yeats of the sort I find incredibly dreary. God only knows why I stuck it out to the end.
Not a big fan of Yeats. To really understand Yates, you really need a good understanding of the occult.
Top 15 Yeats Poems15-The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes14-Coole Park, 1929 13- The White Birds12- The Song of Wandering Aengus11-Men Admiring Themselves in the Water10-The Fisherman (The Fish)9-The Sad Shepard 8-Coole Park, 1929 7- The Magi and The Dolls6-The Wild Swans at Coole 5-The Second Coming4- An Airman Foresees his Death3-On being asked for a War Poem2-The Great Day1-Leda and the SwanBest Plays: On Baile’s Strand, At Hawk’s WellMaud Gonne on Yeats: “His search for hidden knowledge had le...
Sometimes, I really wish Yeats had never written prose. Or plays. His poetry is quite good, obviously, although I know that I find him very difficult to read because it is nearly impossible for me to find the rhythm of his language (with very few exceptions). Still, this is a good selection of poems etc and the background information (except for one or two literary crit pieces that are a little too "this is a piece of literary criticism!") is very handy. Good footnotes, which I always appreciate...
Yeats is a good poet but I'm not a huge fan. His works can be a bit too modern for me.
Love him <3
For the selections I read, I would give this collection about a 3.5, but looking at it as an entire overview of Yeat's major works along with critical background I went with 4 stars rather than 3. I am a big fan of Norton critical editions (I've been a Norton supporter since undergrad), because they tend to pull together a lot of interesting and relevant background and critical material in addition to some of the most important and influential texts in the field of English lit.As far as the Yeat...
i don't know if it was plath who brought me to yeats or vice versa; that one is a bit like the chicken and the egg. at the end of the day though i guess it doesn't really matter, because both are really tasty.so does that make plath fried chicken and yeats scrambled eggs, or vice versa?oh, right. enough of that line of thought. i think yeats would be smacking his forehead right now if he read this. to say something worthwhile, the second coming is a brutal masterpiece, but that's not all he has
Well, mostly loved the poetry!
Honk if you're Irish.
An fine collection of W.B Yeats work, with some very informative essays
Oh Yeats, I do love you. I did get a bit tired of Maud and Ireland by the end though.
Mostly read the poetry. I prefer the early Yeats, which is more lyric and stereotypically fairies, misty lakes, and Erie.
The plot is undeabledy well.
William Butler Yeats was one of the few influential and popular Irish poets of his time, which was the late 1800s and early 1900s. Along with Synge, and few others, he spearheaded a movement from Romantic poetry to a more political stand, helped to co-found the Abbey Theatre, and was an outspoken activist towards the preservation of Irish culture, myth, folklore, legend, and individuality.Most of his early works are centered around the Irish folklore and was heavy handed with the Romantic touch
It is difficult to know what to say about a writer as iconic as Yeats, and of course the poems speak for themselves (for better in most cases, for worse in some), so what I suppose this volume contributes, like most Norton Critical Editions, is a one-volume precis of sorts designed to whet the appetite of the would-be scholar or satisfy that of the less avidly interested reader of letters. This volume does an admirable job of providing substantial, but not overwhelming, examples of Yeats' poetry...
This is a very good introduction to Yeats' works. Liked it so much I ended up getting a complete volume of his works.
Yeats has a vital reputation in the 20th Century world of literature, and despite my pronounced interest in Irish Literature, I have never shown much interest in his work. I decided to read this volume because I wanted to, well, know what the hell he was about.His early poetry leaves a lot to be desired - W.B. sure pined over and failed in his quest to find women. He has many simpering love ballads in this work that don't really reach the heights of great poetry. They're quite pedestrian, actual...
Great collection, containing not only some of Yeats' best poems but also his prose and critical essays.