Yeats-Early Poetry

I am having mixed feelings about Yeats’s poetry. I like the fact that Yeats used several themes throughout his poetry. Each poem is very different from one another, unlike the war poetry. On the other hand, I struggled with interpreting the majority of his work. Some poems are simple, while others are extremely complex. I enjoyed how most of his poetry flowed. Even though I might not always know what he is talking about, it was easy to read.

There were a few poems that interested me. “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” is very different from the war poetry that we read. Yeats took a different approach than the other poets. Death does not seem like a bad thing in his poem. The speaker believes that death will balance his life. His past life and his future life seem to be a waste. It seems as though the speaker thought that the war was irrelevant to his people because he says that there is no outcome that will make their lives worse or better than before the war began. The two lines that really stand out in this poem are “Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.” He is very uncertain about the war and why he is actually fighting.

“Adam’s Curse” was another poem that I enjoyed. I liked that it was a conversation he had with his beloved about poetry. Poetry is beautiful. Anything that is beautiful is hard work. He says that it could take hours to write one line of poetry. Creating poetry is harder than scrubbing a kitchen floor. This insinuates that scrubbing a kitchen floor is easy and anyone could do it. Essentially, after the fall of Adam, everything that is beautiful or worthwhile requires hard work.

I definitely enjoyed his poetry more than his essay. I found most of his essay difficult to read. I agree with what Yeats said in section IV about symbols evoking emotions. He used the colors white and purple as examples. They might not mean anything when they stand alone, but if he would use obvious symbols in the same line, it might suggest certain emotions.