/lit/ - Literature

[il Vate No.22760048]

William Yeats.

Anyone still read this nigger?

[Anonymous No.22760142]

>>22760048
He's basically what happens when you put Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Blake, Spenser, Mallarme, limericks, and Eliot in a blender, add in Paddy folklore, Paddy politics, and theosophy, and somehow the result is worse than any individual ingredient (except for Eliot, Yeats is an improvement).

The more poetry I read, the less impressed I am with Yeats

[il Vate No.22760207]

>>22760142
But isnt he the major preraphaelite/Modernist poet who comes between Blake and Pound?

[Anonymous No.22760215]

>>22760142
You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?

[Anonymous No.22760227]

>>22760207
He just copied whatever was current. When the Pre-Raphaelites were a big deal, he did that. When modernism came, he did that.
But everyone laps up that old country paddy shit

[il Vate No.22760236]

>>22760227
But would you not say you should read Yeats moreso than Blake because he says similar things but more concisely?

[Anonymous No.22760241]

>>22760236
I wouldn't read either, but if I had to not read one I'd not read Blake because he's garbage.

[il Vate No.22760245]

>>22760241
How is Blake garbage?

[Anonymous No.22760461]

>>22760236
You haven't read either if you think they're saying the same things

>>22760241
>Blake is garbage

Filtered. Let me guess, you read the Marriage of Heaven and Hell and the Songs of Innocence and Experience and thought you read all Blake has to offer?
His best stuff is in his prophecies

[Anonymouṡ No.22760474]

>>22760142
>The more poetry I read, the less impressed I am with Yeats

I think he's overpraised, but that doesn't mean he isn't good. His main flaw, to me, is that he had this slightly self-conscious notion of being the National Bard of Ireland, which meant that

a) he often avoided the normal, obvious and sane for no good reason ("aiming deliberately off-centre", someone called it)

and

b) his work is rather lacking in humour. (Plenty of other writers have suffered from this, of course — Wordsworth & Hemingway, for example.) I don't know much about his personal life so I don't know if he had a good sense of humour when he didn't have his Great Poet hat on.

[il Vate No.22760501]

>>22760461
But what Shelley is to Milton so is Yeats to Blake?

[Anonymous No.22760509]

i bought a little collection of some his poems a week or two ago, but didn't account for the fact that i don't really know how to go about reading a poetry collection. any recommendations?

[Anonymous No.22760522]

>>22760501
Milton and Shelley couldn't be more religiously opposed even if they were both liberals.
As for Yeats and Blake, their similarities end in that they're both mystic poets who would dabble in irregular meter influenced by Jakob Boehme.

[Anonymous No.22760553]

>>22760048
Sailing to Byzantium good. It’s the only work of his that has lines that pop into my head from memory every so often. Needless to say they don’t do so with even 1/50th the frequency of Shakespeare but other poets don’t even get that far

[Anonymous No.22760627]

>>22760461
Blake's longer poems are utter trash. He's a mediocrity - the idea of him as this holy idiot visionary far exceeds the reality of his writing. He just didn't have the creative chops to pull off that sort of thing. Some of his shorter lyrics are decent, but he wrote about as much good poetry as Landor or Clough or any other minor poet
The only long english Romantic poems worth reading are Byron's

[Anonymous No.22760707]

>>22760627
You're tripping balls if you think Blake isn't one of the most creative poets and mystics in the English language, and Landor and Clough only in the most superficial manner resemble him.
>The only long english Romantic poems worth reading are Byron's

Byron is, at best, entertaining. He does the absolute bare minimum of what a good poet should do. I'd rather read the Prelude or Hyperion.

[Anonymous No.22760810]

>>22760048
I read some of his complete works but between the roses and the stars and the dew I got sick of it pretty quick. That said, I like a lot of his poems. They are sort of unmatched in lyricism, IMO. No weird tricks or fucked up eccentricities. It's a yes for me.

[Anonymous No.22760836]

>>22760553
what Shakespeare pops into your head? I never found him that memorable desu

[Anonymous No.22761379]

The Magi
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

[Anonymous No.22761582]

>>22760048
Sally Rooney called him a fascist so he should be on every /lit/izen's list.

[il Vate No.22761593]

>>22761582
He was a Fascist, was he not?