Yeats

I've got to say that I'm not really enjoying Yeats' poetry, for the simple reason that I'm not really "getting" it. Perhaps it's because I've never really interpreted poetry before, but I'm just not understanding what he's saying in a lot of the poems. For example, take "Among School Children"--I get the general gist of it, which is that he's walking through a school and seeing children's faces, which sparks a whole bunch of emotions in him--but I'm not really understanding what those motions are. Same with "Byzantium"--I get that Byzantium is a place that he sees as a sort of utopia, but I have no idea what the hell he's saying in the poem. ("I call it death-in-life and life-in-death"? Huh?)

However, a few of his poems were pretty clear to me--especially "A Dialogue of Self and Soul". I liked the unique way that the poem was written--as conversation between his outer self and his inner soul--and the message was very clear to me. He is basically having an internal conflict over which is more desirable: an escape from rebirth (the ultimate goal of most eastern religions), or a constant, never-ending cycle of death and life. In the end, his "self" seems to have won and chosen the latter option, because he sees life and the world as good and desirable: "We must laugh and we must sing, / We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest.)

So, in short, some parts of Yeats' poetry was clear to me, but most was not. I hope that I will understand more through our class discussion, and that understanding Yeats better will help me to understand the entire genre of poetry better.