I really like this guy's poems because they are usually pretty short and don't use super big obscure words but they still make me feel like I don't fully understand their full depth. All the poetry I used to read in school was either too hard for me to read or way too simple and not interesting. Yeats is clear but still has depth and interpreting his poems is like solving a puzzle. I love to read and reread his poems in my collection of his complete poems, even though I haven't read a book since high school. His poetry never loses its interest for me, and I can keep enjoying his work and thinking about it without it ever becoming uninteresting. Thank you WB Yeats for making me enjoy poetry and literature for the first time ever. Do you like Yeats?
I really like this guy's poems because they are usually pretty short and don't use super big obscure words but they...
This is a very sweet post and I relate. Yeats has a similar quality to Blake where, its simple and beautiful but you cant help but feel there is something more going on, a level of artistry beneath the apparent simplicity. Their high reputations helps to accentuate that feeling of course. Yeats was my first love of poetry and I continually revisit him, yet I never feel like I really "get" him.
Yeats is beyond even our time. If you read any of his prose (fiction and non-fiction) I think it will increase your appreciation of the man and his poetry.
I will have to read his prose stuff, I didn't know he wrote prose honestly. Is there a good collection or starting point?
Youra leb
Yeats was an absolute genius, in the 20th century only Trakl and Rilke are on his level.
A vision is his most famous non-fiction work and his short story The Adoration of the Magi is quite famous too. The Norton and Oxford collections of his stuff are a good starting point.
I like it when he says, "Well excuuuuuuuse me!"
Yeats is an excellent poet and truly one of the best ever in the English language.
No second troy has to be my favourite. What is everyone's favourite Yeats poem?
After Yeats who are everyone's favourite poets? mine has to be W.H. Auden, C. Day-Lewis, Marvell, Shakespeare Tony Harrison and Douglas Dunn
This
Funny, I often think of him as the Rilke of the English language.
I’m a sentimentalist at heart so my favorite Yeats are the Happy Shepard, Lake Isle, and Cap and Bells. My favorite poets are always shifting but right now I would say Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, Emily Dickinson, and Louise Glück. Love Auden but I had to warm up to his “anti-hyperbolic” style, he’s brilliant but I agree with him being the lesser of Eliot and Yeats (as I’ve heard him compared somewhat often). I do think he is better than Wallace Stevens though, contrary to Bloom’s “put done thy Auden, pick up thy Stevens” or whatever he said.
Cap and Bells
I agree with placing Yeats above Auden. Yeats is slightly more cryptic and definitely the better writer. Although the shield of Achilles is a masterpiece. I haven't read any T.S. Eliot, where should I start?
prufrock like everyone does
Yeah, the whole of “prufrock and other observations” is a brilliant start. I’m surprised you’ve read Yeats and Auden but no Eliot though. After Eliot move to Crane.
>After Eliot move to Crane
lmao what, how does that follow at all?
Best poet is Poe, because he uses paedomystic symbolism, which is a highly potent form of witchcraft.
Who is this little aryan fairy? Photographer?
Yeats is the only great poet on your list. I find it interesting that you include scribblers like Auden on a list with the master.
>I find it interesting that [he] include[s] scribblers like Auden
why? it's not interesting in the slightest
The thing about Auden is his range. He outranges pretty much everyone. He has achievement in the long poem, in the modernist elliptical poem, in the public poem, in the popular, doggerel poem. No single one of his poems is better than Yeats, etc, but I think he acquires the same standing this way. His poems also move through both religious and secular thinking which is very difficult and impressive. I think only Yeats does it as well. With Eliot the Vicar is always hiding in the closet.
Auden's Collected Poems is a pleasure to read through. I personally find him misrepresented by less comprehensive selections because people usually only like one of the Audens.
I agree he's better than Stevens, who I think becomes far too hermetic and has a fixed idea.
Gudrun Burwitz, Nazi Princess.
This is a fair assessment that I mostly agree with. I don't think that versatility necessarily allows any artist the company of those with mastery, but it is a notable talent nonetheless, and Auden is still quite proficient at what he does. Auden's range is wider than Eliot and Yeats but the level of mastery is obviously absent. I'm not sure who we place in Auden's bracket really, he almost feels like the guard before a threshold where poet's become truly brilliant. He seems to have been just at the step, but not quite there.
"Hermetic" is a good word for Stevens, I haven't thought of that. It's a bit didactic at times too, albeit in an obfuscated way (if that isn't an oxymoron).
>(if that isn't an oxymoron)
I don't think it is
>paedomystic symbolism
Wtf is this?
A neologism, which I made up in order to both sound cool, and also try and sum up Poe's necro-aesthetic.
I imagine this refers to Poe's use of symbols like fairies and other sorts of spirits in his poetry. It appeals to the unconscious, it's magical. I don't think this makes him a supreme poet but it's certainly a quality that great poets have. Not necessarily with the exact symbolism but in the sense of appealing to the unconscious.
Yeats does it better, and so does Spenser.
>Douglas Dunn
Heyyy shoutout to Dunn!
Fucking no one remembers him (and still alive the fucker)
Ill nominate: Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, MacNeice, Browning and Peter Porter (lets ee who remembers him)
Novalis did it first >;^}