Yeats’ Ireland
William Butler Yeats is one of Ireland’s best known poets, writing twelve books of poetry in his lifetime in addition to numerous other works. His poetry often utilizes place and landscape – specifically the natural landscape of Ireland – to interpret the social and cultural landscape of the country. Some of his works, such as The Lake Isle of Innisfree or The Stolen Child, relay peaceful and serene depictions of landscape whereas poems such as Thoughts Upon The Present State Of The World, use landscapes in a more aggressive way to describe the harsh social climate of Ireland at the time. Yeats sought to revive the beauty of Irish landscape and culture, and became a national poet and a voice of Ireland in doing so. His use of
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(“Thoughts” 26-29)
The images of a war-torn landscape and the anonymity of the mother murdered at her door evoke the feelings of fear felt by readers in the time. Bradley writes “Yeats’ language broadens the context so that so that it could be any mother and child in the ravaged landscape of wartime” (115). The violet nature of the poem provides a domineering relation to place, one which feels inescapable. According to Michael Wood, violence in Yeats’ poetry “whether personal, political or apocalyptic—is always sudden and surprising, visible, unmistakable, inflicts or promises injury and is fundamentally uncontrollable.” Before his death in 1939, Yeats wrote a poem titled Under Ben Bulben. Ben Bulben is a rock formation, a part of the Dartry Mountains in Sligo. The poem details the place where Yeats wanted to be buried, just under Ben Bulben in the Drumcliff Churchyard. As such an influential, passionate poet of Ireland, he wanted to be buried surrounded by the landscapes that he grew up in. He writes,
Gardens where a soul’s at ease
The perfection is from peace
Where everything that meets the
In “Who’s Irish”, Gish Jen demonstrates a family that has Chinese root and American culture at the same time. The main character is a fierce grandmother who lives in with her daughter’s family, and then ironically forced to move out because of her improper behavior during she raises her granddaughter. The author uses some unpleasant language and contents to describe the situation, which are effectively demonstrate how difficult and how struggle for people who lives in the gap between two different cultures. I can’t say who is right or who is wrong, but feel sorry for the grandmother.
When Yeats moved back to London to pursue his interest in Arts, he met famous writers like Maud Gonne. The Poem “To Ireland in the Coming Times” is one of the poems Yeats wrote in 1892 and was published in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends. “Know, that I would accounted
Briefly stated, William Butler Yeats’ The Magi is a poem about people who, upon reaching old age, or perhaps just older age, turn to God and the spiritual world for fulfillment and happiness. We are told in the footnote to this poem that, after writing The Dolls, Yeats looked up into the blue sky and imagined that he could see "stiff figures in procession". Perhaps after imagining these figures, Yeats debated within himself whom these pictures could represent. Yeats then went on to write The Magi, a poem which is full of symbolism, a literary technique that he greatly valued.
The work of William Butler Yeats is full of descriptive, evocative imagery, deep personal feelings and strong political opinions. Yeats sets up dynamic contrasts in every one of his poems which for me makes his poetry interesting and thought-provoking. I found these traits particularly evident in “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” as Yeats discusses a variety of poems, prose and plays written by himself throughout his life. These works of art represent the full breadth of Yeats’ work - The themes of life, death immortality and of conflicting dualities. Bloom (1970) proposes the theory that Yeats shares with the Romantic poets “a conviction that the most poetic images are necessarily those of ‘unfulfilled and unfillable desire” and according to Bloom Yeats shares with Shelley his deepest fear of growing old and losing his ability to write beautiful meaningful poetry and to be immortalised through his work. This genuine self-doubt in his ability is particularly evident in this poem. The resignation and fear is implicit in the concluding rhyming couplet in each stanza.,
William Butler Yeats is one of the most esteemed poets in 20th century literature and is well known for his Irish poetry. While Yeats was born in Ireland, he spent most of his adolescent years in London with his family. It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he later moved back to Ireland. He attended the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin and joined the Theosophical Society soon after moving back. He was surrounded by Irish influences most of his life, but it was his commitment to those influences and his heritage that truly affected his poetry. William Butler Yeats’s poetry exemplifies how an author’s Irish identity can help create and influence his work.
Yeats Irish Identity shaped poetry, mythology and history, other Irish writers, folktales, Irish Theatre. Many people say that William Butler Yeats was the greatest poem writer from the 20th century but to him he was just an ordinary person that had a love for writing poems. William Butler Yeats was born on 13 June 1865 in County Dublin, Ireland to John Butler Yeats, a lawyer turned portrait painter and Susan Mary Pollexfen, daughter of a wealthy family from county Sligo Yeats's mother shared with her son her interests in folklore, fairies, and astrology as well as her love of Ireland, particularly the region surrounding Sligo in western Ireland where Yeats spent much of his childhood. He had a brother named Jack and two sisters, namely, Elizabeth
Yeats was a confessional poet - that is to say, that he wrote his poetry directly from his own experiences. He was an idealist, with a purpose. This was to create Art for his own people - the Irish. But in so doing, he experienced considerable frustration and disillusionment. The tension between this ideal, and the reality is the basis of much of his writing. One central theme of his earlier poetry is the contrast
Yeats wrote this poem in respect of Major Robert Gregory, who died in the War. An Irish Airman Foresees His Death is written in the background of the Easter 1916 when the Irish people have demanded the independence from Britain. This poem was written for Gregory’s devoted duty for his countrymen by joining in the British Royal Flying Company (Walsh, 2012). In Easter 1916, Yeats proposed that Ireland had to confirm its independence and states identity through rebellion and the affectionate discovery of change. So, the unwanted bloodshed and sacrifice perpetually change the state of the
John Keats was a well established English poet in the early 19th century. His work is greatly influenced by his family, studies, political views, and life experiences. Keats was born October 31st, 1795 in a stable to his devoted parents, Thomas and Frances Keats (15). Before Keats’s twentieth birthday he would experience many hardships from the passing of both of his parents as well as his grandmother. Thomas Keats died in 1804 after an accident occurred while riding his horse, leaving John Keats as the ‘man’ of the house at the young age of nine. Less than five years passed before Frances Keats fell ill and passed after contracting tuberculosis. At a young age Keats experienced great loss and suffering that would linger with him for the entirety
In addition to trying to voice the public, he also made an essence of the poem by including the variations of the people in society; referencing the poem, he was sure to include the different people in society to acknowledge that the world will also be affected. Yeats mentions, “A young girl in the indolence of her youth…”, he is trying his best to make it conspicuous that an adolescent female has absolutely no say in the government's actions and the politics corresponding along with it. Although nobody will ever listen to a young girls opinion, Yeats was trying to show the world that the political decisions that the government makes will affect everybody, even those without a voice. In conjunction with Yeats referencing the young girl, he had mentioned an old man in winter. Yeats had used the old man in winter to refer to the fact that an old man is helpless anyway, so nobody cares about his opinion in the political aspect of the world. Also, the winter puts a damper on everybody, but especially the older folks who cannot help themselves. Yeats was asked to write a poem about the first world war, but he took it to another level and wrote about the different types of people it would affect. Because he has always had a passion for politics, when Henry James gave Yeats this opportunity, he could not turn it down. Because of Yeats love for political content, he had written this poem with no hesitation, he could have rejected James of this offer, but he quickly and very thoroughly wrote this poem bringing meaning to the world. Yeats had always cherished the government and its works, therefore, he incorporated his love for political content into his love for the poetic
6) You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but the end is not yet.
As the reader looks deeper into the poem he/she might find alternate meanings behind the luring of the child. Yeats was a nationalist during a time of great political upheaval in Ireland. Nationalists wanted Ireland return to years before when Ireland was considered one nation. The Celtic images of the past could represent a desire to return to a time where Ireland was united. The freedom that the faery world allows is representative of the freedom that unity throughout Ireland allowed before religion and politics became large issues.
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, a dramatist, and a prose writer - one of the greatest English-language poets of the twentieth century. (Yeats 1) His early poetry and drama acquired ideas from Irish fable and arcane study. (Eiermann 1) Yeats used the themes of nationalism, freedom from oppression, social division, and unity when writing about his country. Yeats, an Irish nationalist, used the three poems, “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” “September 1913” and “Easter 1916” which revealed an expression of his feelings about the War of Irish Independence through theme, mood and figurative language.
William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, in Dublin, Irelandtheson of a well-known Irish painter, John Butler Yeatsand died in January 28, 1939, Menton,France. Yeats was deeply complex in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, notwithstanding Irish independence from England. William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the important figures of 20th century’s literature considering one of the greatestpoets of a century. W.B Yeats’ poems The Easter1916written in 1916 andan Irish Airman foresees His Deathwritten in 1918and published in 1919, exposes two different groups of people who went to wars during First World War in reflective narrative form. Those
W.B. Yeat’s poem, Easter 1916, details the speaker’s feelings of Nationalism and heartache as he remembers those that he lost in the Easter Rising. As the speaker reflects on the time before the rising, he remembers not only how his life has changed but also how his friends and companions had transformed both in their character and in their state of being. The speaker uses metaphors to visualize the unchanging goal of Irish freedom and the coming of nights that bring about death and heartache. In this analysis, I will be focusing on the first and last stanzas of the poem. By comparing these two stanzas I will reflect on the literary devices used, as well as the differences of the speaker’s visuals from the beginning and end. Overall, the speaker