Tag Archives: W.B. Yeats

“I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not to be among the greatest.” –John Keats

I was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. – James Joyce, Ulysses Born in 1795 on this day, John Keats was orphaned at fifteen. Because his … Continue reading

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“Sunlight on a broken column.” — T.S. Eliot

It’s T.S. Eliot’s birthday. Poets like William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane both said that they needed to forcibly divorce themselves from Eliot’s influence in order to be able to write. His language and influence had that strong a pull. … Continue reading

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“Poets, the best of them, are a very chameleonic race.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to … Continue reading

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“I do not write for the public.” — poet Gerard Manley Hopkins

“I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind, … Continue reading

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“That is no country for old men.” — William Butler Yeats

“I thought we might bring the halves together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in the memory, and yet had been freed of provincialism by an exacting criticism, a European pose.” — W.B. Yeats William Butler … Continue reading

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“Before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.” — Austin Clarke

“He cleared a non-Yeatsian space in which an Irish poet might build a confident poetry in English for which the term ‘Anglo-Irish’ is meaningless.” – Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets Austin Clarke was born in Dublin on this day … Continue reading

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“Is there any virtue, for literature, for poetry, in the simple continuity of a tradition? I believe there is not.” — Thomas Kinsella

The Dolmen Press, operated out of Dublin, was founded in 1951 by Liam Miller, and played a crucial part in the development of Irish poetry in the mid-20th century. It was a strictly nationalist operation; before The Dolmen Press, poets … Continue reading

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“I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.” Happy Birthday, Rebecca West

It is hard to talk about her without referencing the generations of writers she inspired, all of whom admit their debt to her. Robert Kaplan is the most open about it (his Balkan Ghosts, which launched his career, has him … Continue reading

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“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.” – Happy Birthday, Maud Gonne

Maud Gonne, Irish revolutionary, feminist, radical, and, oh yeah, lifelong poetic muse of William Butler Yeats, was born on December 20 in 1865. After a couple of love affairs (none of whom were Yeats), and after having a couple of … Continue reading

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“I have ever hated all nations, professions, and communities, and all my love is toward individuals.” — Jonathan Swift

“When a man of true Genius appears in the World, you may know him by this infallible Sign, that all the Dunces are in Conspiracy against him.” — Jonathan Swift I don’t have much time to read for pleasure these … Continue reading

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