Monday Listening to the humming of our hummingbirds the other day, I thought of Yeats’s reference in “The Lake Isle of Inisfree” to linnet wings. I don’t think we have linnets in America and I can’t imagine that they make any sound at all, much less hummingbird buzzing. Still, Yeats conjures up images of feathery […]
Tag Archives: William Butler Yeats
Poetry, a Mystical Key to the Beyond
spiritual Sunday I’ve recently been reading Alex Owen’s The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, which is helping me better understand how poetry aids us in our search for God—or if that sounds too institutional, for the numinous. Owen focuses on the spiritual exploration underway at the turn of the […]
Do Endings Reveal Meaning of Life?
Monday My wife Julia alerted me to an intriguing although somewhat frustrating article in Atlantic about the end of time. Drawing on Frank Kermode’s 1967 The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Megan Garber wrestles with an issue recently raised by The Washington Post: how do we live with constant reminders […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Dover Beach", "Second Coming", Alexander Pope, endings, Frank Kermode, King Lear, Matthew Arnold, modernism, post-apocalyptic fiction, Samuel Beckett, Sense of an Ending, William Shakespeare, world weary ennui Comments closed
Among Slovenian School Children
A visit to an 8th grade English class in Slovenia had me thinking of Yeats’s “Among School Children and appreciating the educational process.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Among School Children", school, school children, Slovenia Comments closed
Apples That Taste of Earth and Song
Apples bring out poetic creativity, all the more so because the West has seen them as the forbidden fruit. I share here a selection of tempting apple poems.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "August", "eve's version", "Song of the Wander Aengus", apples, Charles Algernon Swinburne, Christina Rossetti, fruit, Goblin Market, Grace Schulman, Grimm Brothers, John Milton, Lucille Clifton, Paradise Lost, Snow White, temptation, the fall Comments closed
Sleeping Outdoors
Poetry adds an extra dimension to sleeping outdoors.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Adam's Curse", "Fern Hill", "Poem in October", "Sleeping in the Forest", "Song of the Open Road", "Stopping by the Woods on a Showy Evening", After Apple-Picking, Anam Cara, Dylan Thomas, John O'Donohue, Mary Oliver, Nature, Robert Frost, sleep, Walt Whitman Comments closed
Prayer for My Granddaughters
As Hurricane Irma bears down on Florida after having devastated several islands, I find myself delivering up Yeats’s “Prayer for My Daughter.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Prayer for My Daughter", climate change, climate denial, denialism, Hurricane Irma, hurricanes Comments closed
Can Poetry Stop This Man?
Poetry may not have been able to stop Donald Trump, but it has its ways of mounting resistance. Poems by Tennyson, Auden, and Yeats explain how.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "In Memory of W. B. Yeats", "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Donald Trump, In Memoriam, Joyce Carol Oates Comments closed
The Terrible Beauty of Political Fanatics
While many are celebrating the centenary of Ireland’s Easter uprising, Yeats’s famous poem on the rebellion offers us cautions about how to respond to such acts of rebellion today.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Easter 1916", Arab Spring, Easter uprising, Ireland, ISIS, Muslim Brotherhood Comments closed
