Yeats

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Happy Birthday (Belated)

Once again it’s time to wish our all time favorite Poet—William Butler Yeats—a very Happy Birth on the days after and week and month he was born. We are so pleased to have him amongst the bipeds of light and love. Although I don’t know what sort of person he was. I’ve heard rumors that he was not the kindest of gentlemen. Not having read a biography of him I don’t know any real, that is truthful, information about his humanity.

WB Yeats, who was born on the 13th of June in 1865 and died in January of 1939, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. 

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

“I have spread my dreams under your feet.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

“For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.”

“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity”

These lovely quotes from different poems were posted by Dena Bain Taylor along with a photo. It’s nice that the photo is different from the ones we are used to seeing.

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Words

Just in case there was something prior, More on words I dislike:

  • Eponymous. It seems so pretentious. Why not just say what it is? The title of whatever is the same as the person I’m writing about. Well OK, in fewer words. Or maybe it just annoys me as I had to look it up so many times as I kept forgetting what it meant. The word is just plain unfriendly.
  • Siblings. Hissssss. A cold word, an almost but not quite harsh word. It doesn’t sound at all like brother or sister. Maybe it’s good to use if you don’t like your family.
  • Facetious. Another pretentious word. It’s rarely spoken unless it’s the only three-syllable word someone knows. And then it’s used often.

And something to note about Yeats:

  • He is the only poet I’m aware of who has many poem titles longer than the poem.
  • I love & adore many of his short poems. There’s none better than “When You are Old,” “The Mask,” and “A Deep-sworn Vow.” “Leda and the Swan” is so powerful it can quite make you shudder. That poem is posted in full under “Myth and Mystery” in this blog.
  • Of course the Center Will Not Hold…there is no center. (This I discovered within Meditation.) Go ahead—look for your center.

And then, because there are no better words than those we receive from Rumi:

  • Posted by Hiral Thakkar

And thus it is I leave us for the day—to go sit on the patio, the dog and I—to watch the Thunderstorm, aye, by and by.

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Happy Birthdays

Posted by Psyche’s Call With Donna May

William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865, and died on January 28, 1939. Another of our favorites has a June birthday: Egon Schiele, born June 12, 1890, and died October 31, 1918. Egon died from the flu pandemic just two days after his wife and baby. Willy died in a small attic room with both his wife and mistress at his side. Could there be more of a contrast in life and times?

And then of course one an artist (Schiele) and the other a poet and writer. Yet who knows what heights Schiele might have reached had he lived. He too wrote a bit of poetry and letters. Both consider what it is that makes an artist, and what it is that is in the special makings of things that make some reach for the Heavens (whatever that means) and others content to be earthbound.

egonschiele_self-portrait1912

Egon Schiele: Self Portrait with Physalis, 1912

Both saw Beauty and Terror in everything in the world. The gift to us is that they tried so valiantly to share it with us, sometimes succeeding, if we but eyes to see. Imagine.

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Yeats Too

Time and again. I come back to Yeats, and his prophetic words from ‘The Second Coming’. “The ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Personally, I don’t associate Yeats’ language with religion, or politics or war. For me it represents a far deeper internal mythology; the one that presents us with the cold choice of a hero’s journey or a sleep that lasts for eternity. NB

This was posted by Nick Bantock, along with the photo (appropriately) of a postcard. Bantock is the author of Griffin & Sabine, and others of their books, the trilogy of which I have. And I will tell of that at some further post coming up.

Nick BantockSo, Bantock and Yeats too, as we continue to read our way through our self-isolation. Our quarantine. Who better?

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Once More, Into The Breach…

I don’t know; wish I did. All that and oh well.

  • I seem to have floundered off the page again. I would be worried if it mattered.
  • Strange places in the hovel of memories: 1. Years back—where? Was it Michigan? When I lived in the house on the 10 acre woods. The first dream was that of the whippets. Whippets had long been of some significance although I didn’t know of what. They frequently appeared in my life and were witnessed by the boy and the girl. And then, I dreamed I found a pair of them and took them into the garage there, to the house on the edge of that wood, to wait for their people to arrive and rescue them. (Whippets always appeared in a pair, in reality and in dreams.) And so they did. The next day, out walking with Kate-the-golden-one, down that country road, appeared two whippets, trotting alone and in tandem. I coaxed them into the garage and phoned a radio station then playing at the house, to give the information and request an announcement. The song to go along with the find was “The Happy Wanderer.” (It was a station of oldies.) Not long after the announcement there was a phone call from the whippet people who then came to get them. Of course they had just lost them, of course they just happened to be listening to that station.
  • 2. The dream that night was of the raven. Raven or crow, I tend to favor ravens. I found a raven on that very country road, a wounded creature who could not fly. I took it in and gave it great care and nursing. When I was not at home I kept it in my utility room so it could be enclosed and yet have some room. Safety, freedom, and constraint. Noble intentions, noble gifts. Except the beautiful iridescent creature tore a hole right through the wall. There was a plaster and dry wall and two-by-four mess blown clear through to the kitchen. The next day, walking down that same country road, a neighbor came out to ask me if I wanted to take in a crow. He had found an injured one and couldn’t care for it himself. Was I interested? I gracefully declined. I didn’t want the mess of the feathered beauty tearing apart the house, leaving the white mist of drywall powder to cover us there.
  • It is after all, a murder of crows and an unkindness of ravens.
  • I told the kids who told me I made too much of such things, which I did. I was crazed to know the meaning of them. I had one foot on shore and one at sea…into a fog of meaning and being, into a dream world not called, delivered without quest or anchor. But I could not read the sign. How will I ever know if everything was a dream, if anything was real?
  • Last night I got up at four a.m. to read The Winter’s Tale. I wanted to understand what the king said at the end, when he touched the statue of his wife—old now, and gone—and he said she was warm. Who does that—this waking to read? Isn’t that crazy even for me?
  • Credit Not Given

Still, it looks like red rock canyon. So many places of country roads, so many places left behind. No one then to love the pilgrim soul, or the moments of sad grace.