A Monthly Column for Word Lovers
Encouragement for Poets
When I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
—W. B. Yeats, from his memoirs
The modern, and somewhat cynical line on poets is that they should not quit their day jobs. Poet pay is dismal or nonexistent; the opportunities for contemporary recognition, minuscule; and the chances for posthumous celebration, hardly to be taken seriously. We're taking a contrarian view in the Lounge this month, as we dust off the Poetry Corner and pay a visit to a poet who never really had a day job, but who left an enduring imprint on the language, echoes of which can still be heard every day throughout the wide world of English.
An article about William Butler Yeats that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1938, while Yeats was still alive, makes this observation:
[He] first appears, in the memories of his contemporaries, as a rarefied human being: a tall, dark-visaged young man who walked the streets of Dublin and London in a poetic hat, cloak, and flowing tie, intoning verses. The young man's more solid qualities were not then apparent to the casual observer.
Though they may now be sporting earbuds, young men fitting the first sentence of this description can probably be found wandering the streets of Dublin and London today – as well as the byways of many universities and liberal arts colleges. The casual observer might dispense with the question of solid qualities altogether, having conveniently slotted such a young man into the category of pseud or wannabe. At least in the case of Yeats, this appearance was deceiving.
You don't know any Yeats? You may think you don't, because study of his poems does not typically begin in high schools, and if you skipped all the literature courses in college or university, his work could have escaped your notice. But even if you're wearing earbuds today, chances are that you may hear a quote from or allusion to Yeats without being aware of its source. Take, for example, his widely reprinted 1920 poem, "The Second Coming", which begins thus:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Aside from the opportunities they provide for passing reference, these lines have supplied memes for a number of artists in the generations since Yeats. "The Widening Gyre" has been used as a title for television episodes, a comic book series, and novels. Things Fall Apart, as most who completed secondary education will know, is the title of a widely-read 1958 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The phrase "loosed upon the world" — not original with Yeats, but certainly given a huge boost by him — turns up in half a dozen news stories on any given day. The first four lines of "The Second Coming" were even entered into the Congressional Record in September 2000 when then Representative Charles T. Canady (R-FL) quoted them while speaking on the floor. The last two lines above seem to sum up for everyone, at any given time, what is truly wrong with their party, church, family, or country. The remainder of "The Second Coming" is equally replete with enduring images, and the last two lines,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
has inspired a number of works, including a Joni Mitchell song and a collection of essays from Joan Didion, both called Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
That's one poem. Among other phrases that Yeats gets the main credit for immortalizing, if not creating outright, are the following.
- A terrible beauty is born
(from his poem "Easter 1916")
- Mad as the mist and snow
(the title of a Yeats poem, in which the line also occurs)
- That is no country for old men
(from "Sailing to Byzantium"; it inspired the title of the 2005 Cormac McCarthy novel No Country for Old Men and subsequent 2007 Coen Brothers film)
- Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
(from "The Stolen Child", which has inspired several musical settings and other works, including the Robert Wiersema novella The World More Full of Weeping)
- O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
(closing lines of "Among School Children", which inspired the 1978 novel Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran)
The list could go on, but the point is adequately made with a few examples: poets at their best, perhaps more than artists in any other medium, create a trove of lexemes out of which future writers, poets, musicians, and other artists, great and small, fashion their own linguistic expressions.
It's refreshing to learn that Yeats had the impression of much of his experience being preparation for something that never happens – surely many of us come to a similar conclusion at different times. But Yeats' observation of this apparently futile aspect of life never deterred him from doing the thing that he did best, and persevering in it his entire life. He received considerable recognition during his lifetime (including the 1923 Nobel Prize for literature), but it is only long after his death, and through the process of other artists and writers returning to his work again and again, that his work is thoroughly woven into the warp and weft of English, often so seamlessly that speakers and writers are not aware of the origin. And so long after his death, much happens for which he did not imagine his life was any preparation. Perhaps even his early self-presentation as the sensitive young man was a part of his future greatness, a component in the overall scheme of his mastery of expression that may reflect another observation of his: "We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us."
Here are two lesser known poems of Yeats, published 100 years ago in a collection called The Green Hamlet (1910).
THESE ARE THE CLOUDS
THESE are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye:
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
And discord follow upon unison,
And all things at one common level lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run
And these things came, So much the more thereby
Have you made greatness your companion,
Although it be for children that you sigh:
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye.
THE COMING OF WISDOM WITH TIME