Opening exercise: Wendy lives School for Scandal as her family sells off her Aunt’s family portraits.
Traits of Yeats
- Irish identity
- playwright
- believers of faries and ghosts
- father
- spent time outdoors and in the city
- born in Dublin, lived in London and summers back in Ireland
- water experiences where he saw faries
- poet since age 15, published at 20
- Writing about Irish mythology established him as an author, Irish nationalism
- Dublin Club: political, freedom from Britian, cultural distinction from England
- Writes about the occult and had this at the center of all he did and thought
- Susan Wise Bauer: philosophy gyres (vortexes) that the world functions in 2,000 year cycles. Life starts good, gets bad, degenerating into chaos until it rebirths back into order.
- Raised protestant (big in Norther Ireland)
Prayer for a Daughter
He wanted his daughter not to be just truly beautiful, or just prideful and opinionated. He has in view her as an individual, self-happy. Ceremony and politeness required for happiness. Reference ancient gods. Cf. 1 Corinthians 10, pagans sacrificing to idols as demons.
The Magi
Christ seeing the Magi, the sky is in heavens, looking up to tall people from child’s perspective
Easter
Change: the theme of the poem.
I: At the start, sees superficial talk (Show Me from My Fair Lady). II: the people, even the one who married the poet’s unrequited love. III: The stone: standing for what is right, remember the sacrifice of standing against the tide of England. Let’s make them go around us, not let the sacrifice go without it’s purpose…
Cap and Bells
The cap and bells represent: his soul, his identity?
Innisfree
peaceful place, like Walden? in Walden you had to be there to be one with the place, but here he is in the city and takes with him the peace from that natural place. Note internal rhyming.
Lapis Lazuli
The power of arts to buffer tragedy.
The Wheel
Summaries: sense of longing for something past, or coming. Is the longing for death a shock and awe statement: wake up, you can always stop being thirsty when you die. Or an allusion to Christ’s tomb?
Summary:
If you don’t have the reading done, you listen well. Poetry has the pay off in the “aha” moments, giving insight into so many avenues of life (social, political, spiritual, relational). You have to slow down to appreciate poetry, very engaging. The poetry left a legacy worth consideration as great literature.
Paper idea: write on Peace in Walden, Innisfree, and Whitman.