Yeats - Hellogoodbye

Ok, this will be my first and only post about Yeats. Technical difficulties made me scrap my previous Yeats postings so here goes:

Yeats' Youth--

The first poem by Yeats that I ever read was The Lake Isle of Innisfree. I really liked the imagery and the carefree flow of the poem. It's simple and pretty and paints us a beautiful picture of what life in Ireland could be like. [Before reading Yeats, I hadn't really read Irish writers and didn't really know anything about Ireland's social or political background]. The Sorrow of Love, When You are Old, and Adam's Curse created, in my head, this lovesick teenager. Maud Gonne obviously had a huge impact on Yeats' life and he, foolishly, chased her for years and years.

War Poems--

During this time in Yeats' life, he had become quite the Irish patriot. Easter 1916, An Irish Airman Forsees His Death, and The Second Coming demonstrate a feeling in Yeats that something big was happening at the time. The image of the gyre in several of his poems seem to say that from this storm, big changes will take place. And although not a whole lot of change really did come to Ireland after the uprisings noted in Easter 1916, Yeats still believed that he had played a part in the efforts.

Old Age--

As Yeats gets older, his poetry seems to change. As we talked about in class, he creates this persona of the 'old man.' He notes that he is no longer in the best of health. Like in Sailing to Byzantium, he compares an aged man to "a tattered coat upon a stick." He longs for youth, implying that although he still has a sharp mind, he lacks the ability to be as active as he once was, or as the people around him are.

As a whole, Yeats' poetry has changed and grown to represent himself in different times of his life. I think it makes him more relatable and gives him the ability to be a poet who has a very large audience. For example, I really liked his poems that were written in his youth, but not so much his poetry written during the Irish uprising. I did learn a lot from reading Yeats, most notably the political struggles of Ireland in the early 20th century. Irish mythology was another spectrum of Yeats' poetry that I found to be very interesting. I think I have a better appreciation for Irish literature and am pretty excited for more Irish poets throughout this course.