Comments on: Moore Better Blues

By: B

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 03:05:47 +0000

On ‘The Indian’: No doubt there is intense emotion here. What prompts such emotion, its source and its nature, is slightly vague; and one problem with Yeats’s early verse is this unvarying, colourless tone, expressing sorrow or joy with the same busy and pacy lyricism.

By: David Novak

David Novak — Fri, 21 Nov 2003 21:43:00 +0000

Loved words "for their own sake" as opposed to "for what they conveyed"? I can see that. Usually the poetry I enjoy the most makes me scratch my head and mutter, "makes ya think, don’t it?" without forming any really paraphrasable determinations. I’ve probably had that response more often with Yeats than with Kip.

By: Alan Sullivan

Alan Sullivan — Fri, 21 Nov 2003 10:44:43 +0000

Well, Yeats was much abhorred too–especially by people who knew him personally.

I don’t think you can really distinguish poetry from other modes of expression if you say only that its purpose is to capture or embody experience. If there is something magical about Yeats in comparison with Kipling, it is perhaps not that the former believed in magic, but that he loved words for their own sake.

By: David Novak

David Novak — Sun, 16 Nov 2003 17:30:02 +0000

A poets primary purpose were always experience, not cognition. Otherwise, Emily Dickinsons I love to see it lap the miles might have more plainly stated what she saw, or another, what was hers by the right of white election. The experience is what counts, not some philosophy about the experience. Yeats is criticized for writing purposefully to be obscure. His exact contemporary, Kipling, is often criticized for the opposite, for being too lucidly understood. Is either man the greater? Each has left verse which, despite the intervention of much time, has lost not its flavor or its power; and each has left verse which has (but then who has not?). Kipling is the greater craftsman for his technique, Yeats forever clumsy. Kipling was no fool, and much abhorred for it; Yeats much the fool, and much admired. In the verse of either one can find the transcendental moment, beyond whatever failings erudite scholarship may locate in the rest.

By: David Novak

David Novak — Sat, 15 Nov 2003 16:19:13 +0000

I’ve heard that the "paraphrasable content" of Gather Ye Rosebuds is pretty pathetic, rather hallmarkish in contrast (say) to anything written by Shakespeare; and yet I’ve always felt it to be one of the loveliest of English lyrics. I have no problem with the triteness of the thought expressed. I recall a poetry teacher of mine, Paul Carroll, telling that a colleague had objected to the song line "I’m gonna live forever" from the movie Fame which was then popular. His point: as philosophy, sure the statement is wrong and ridiculous; but as an expression of feeling (given the characters and the situation within which they were making the expression) it was an accurate description. Similarly, I can recall reading several of Yeats’ poems, including the one of Leda and the swan, without a knowledge of what his underlying theories on sex (or whatever) were. In fact I’ve never read Yeats any further than what is in my edition of collected verse, and not been troubled by a lack of understanding of some particular motif. It had some particular meaning for Yeats that it may not for me, but so it is with mystical things. Sometimes a "proper" experience, as "falling in love," when rationalized in prose, seems quite ridiculous, at least to the objective onlookers, if not to the one that is suffering. When I read Yeats, I go to find his experience, not to learn his philosophy. I don’t know if that makes any sense.

By: Alan Sullivan

Alan Sullivan — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 18:38:52 +0000

Philosophic prostheses, perhaps…

By: acdouglas

acdouglas — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:39:52 +0000

I read to understand, and Yeats too often writes not to be understood, or to be understood as vaguely as possible.

Yeats, I would venture, wanted his poems, with all their ambiguous and arcane imagery, to be understood poetically, as do all genuine poets their poems. When Yeats wrote his poems, he did not, for even an instant, imagine he was writing a philosophic theses on ... whatever. If those ambiguous and arcane images cause one's mind to resonate and spin with ideas no matter how elusive -- resonate and spin much in the same way Jabberwocky caused Alice's mind to do -- then they've done their proper job, and the job they were intended to do.

Just a thought.

Regards,

ACD

By: acdouglas

acdouglas — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 05:21:12 +0000

Oops.

I wrote: "...writing a philosophic theses...."

Scratch that errant "a".

ACD

By: Aaron Haspel

Aaron Haspel — Sun, 09 Nov 2003 22:37:10 +0000

Tim: Yeats's political sympathies are well-known, but the most embarrassing political moment in the letters belongs to Moore, who in 1931 writes that the "enthusiasm of the Hitlerites is unbelievable and they celebrate their martyrs in war songs which they sing with delirious gusto... They are chiefly students and intellectuals. They believe in property but not rank or royalty and seem to be a refreshing crowd."
A lot of otherwise intelligent people went in big for the whole "nation of poets" business.

Andrea: I envy you; liking (some) poetry is my cross to bear. I read poems because they allow me to enter into the thoughts of a superior intelligence. This is not, I can assure you, an Approved Reason, but it is mine. Great poems are more rewarding the better they are understood. Most of Yeats is exactly the opposite. I doubt whether the famous lines in The Second Coming about the best and the worst are even true, as a general proposition, but in any case Yeats provides no hint of their nature: the poem is a cistern into which the reader is invited to empty his own ideas of best and worst, which have nothing to do with Yeats's. It is the same with the shape with lion body (leaving aside the unfortunate adjective) and the rough beast slouching to be born. I read to understand, and Yeats too often writes not to be understood, or to be understood as vaguely as possible.

By: Andrea Harris

Andrea Harris — Sun, 09 Nov 2003 20:43:01 +0000

I think that’s the only poem of his I like. But — so there is a "stock market" in what poets are supposed to look like. So what? There’s a stereotypical "look" for a lot of professions. I didn’t say that the "poet look" wasn’t true, I said that it didn’t matter to me.

As for this — "They are not reading Yeats but a poem of their own construction" — because people who like a poem aren’t liking it for the Approved Reasons, well, too bad. Damn, I’m glad I hate poetry.