W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him

Subject: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 01:28 AM

I've watched these videos from the National library in Dublin. read poems and crits.

the thing is - he's not really auto biographical - is he? not like \Wilde and Joyce.....

answers on a postcard, please....

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: michaelr
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 01:56 AM

Videos? The man was a poet. Just read him.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Joe Offer
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:03 AM

I know what you mean, Al. He's a fascinating personage, but elusive. I went to his grave in County Sligo and I've read what I could about him, but I don't have a feeling for who he was - the person of Yeats does not come through his literature, unlike the personalities of Wilde and Joyce. There's something about Yeats that is unapproachable.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:09 AM

What exactly do you want to know, Al, apart from that? There is an excellent informative entry on Wikipedia, with extensive bibliogs &c; and others in The Oxford Guide to English Literature, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature (which has the advantage of having been co-edited by my dear late wife) &c &c &c...

Best
≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:11 AM

His memoirs have been published. They a re a lovely read provide rather a lot of insight into the man. And read his work, What a joyous treasure he is.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Musket
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:48 AM

Seance?

Sorry, not helping.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 03:22 AM

Depends on how well you want to get to know him Al
Quick reading list - all available.

Autobiography (1916)
Biography Herold Bloom (1970)
Servant of the Queen Maud Gonne McBride autoiography
Collected Poems (various editions from 1934 to 1977
Collected plays
W.B.Yeats Michael Mac Liammóir and Eavan Boland(1971) - a handy, extremely well-illustrated thumbnail survey of his life and times, re-published in the 1990s and still available in many remaindered bookshops for half-nothing, well worth getting hold of as a quick introduction
Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland (1973)
Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend and Myth Yeats' - excellent anthology (Penguin 1998)
W.B. Yeats and the Children of Danu Peter Alderson Smith (1987)
W.B.Yeats and Irish Folklore Mary Helen Thuente (1980)

Great and fascinating man.
His Grave at Drumcliff, in the shadow of Ben Bulben, County Sligo, is worth a stop if you happen to be passing.
The epitaph on his grave reads:
Cast a cold eye on life, on death
Horseman, pass by.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 04:39 AM

Or his family. His daughter-in-law Grainne taught on the clarsach circuit for many years, and her daughter Caitriona teaches concert harp, most recently at Malmo in Sweden. If there's something not in the books, you might try writing to her.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 05:50 AM

Richard Ellmann's "Yeats: The Man and the Masks" is a terrific biography.

(And Google says "Buy Yeats Masks on Amazon" - really? What would you do with it, Halloween?)

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 08:49 AM

Gotcha!   Ellman. did a a great job on Wilde and Joyce - he'll be the boy!

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:04 PM

"Buy Yeats Masks on Amazon"

I suspect Google/Amazon have code that will suggest you can buy Chongo masks.. or any other chump...I mean chimp.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:26 PM

We should have a thread for the most surreal purchase offered. Obviously, we can start with the Government and Opposition, but what's the point in buying two tons of horse droppings? They give them away down the road.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: GUEST,DrWord
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:41 PM

Jim Carroll: re: Yeats' epitaph
I love Frank Connor's comment. Knowing him rather well, Frank said: "Yeats never cast a cold eye on anything!"



keep on pickin'
dennis

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 03:00 PM

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Mr Red
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 03:12 PM

well now - you might want to visit Thame in Oxfordshire. His father was a diplomat and lived there at the time of WB's birth. There is a plaque to mark the auspicious occasion.
I recommend the Bank Holiday weekend in August - there is a little festival going on down the road at the showground, and a big red bus to take you there.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 04:13 PM

Well, my first thought was "Well, he's been dead for a while." I, too, have visited with him 'neath Bulben's head. Nice grave, actually. If you go you should also climb up to Queen Maeve's grave. It's quite easy to find.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 04:14 PM

Benbulben. Not what I said.

Subject: ADD: The Fiddler of Dooney (W.B. Yeats)
From: PHJim
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 09:33 PM

This is my favourite Yeats Poem. I've heard it performed as a song to several different tunes, but I still prefer it as a poem.

THE FIDDLER OF DOONEY

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,   
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;   
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,   
My brother in Moharabuiee.   
   
I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;   
I read in my book of songs   
I bought at the Sligo fair.   
   
When we come at the end of time,   
To Peter sitting in state,   
He will smile on the three old spirits,   
But call me first through the gate;   
   
For the good are always the merry,   
Save by an evil chance,   
And the merry love the fiddle   
And the merry love to dance:   
   
And when the folk there spy me,   
They will all come up to me,   
With, "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"   
And dance like a wave of the sea.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 11:46 PM

Exquisite. My own favourites are Sailing To Byzantium, of which I quoted part of a stanza a few posts back [and used a couple of years ago on a thread when I turned 80], and Aedh Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 01:51 AM

ordered the ellman - which is not on kindle.
i hate wearing reading glasses!

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: GUEST,Roderick Warner
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 09:50 AM

Hey Al, there is a more recent biog from 1998 by R.F. Foster in two volumes: The Apprentice Mage and The Arch-Poet, pretty exhaustive and very good. Goes into the social and political background to Yeats' life and times very well. Plus a lot of his writings apart from the poems on Project Gutenberg free downloads...

Subject: RE: BS: W.B, Yeats - how can I get to know him
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 10:23 AM

Took a semester study of Yeats and (TS) Eliot. I like Yeats.