false 817540 4 William Butler Yeats, whom many consider this century's greatest poet, began as a bard of the Celtic Twilight, reviving legends and Rosicrucian symbols. By the early 1900s, however, he was moving away from plush romanticism, his verse morphing from the incantatory rhythms of "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree" into lyrics "as cold and passionate as the dawn." At every stage, however, Yeats plays a multiplicity of poetic roles. There is the romantic lover of "When You Are Old" and "A Poet to His Beloved" ("I bring you with reverent Hands / The books of my numberless dreams..."). And there are the far more bitter celebrations of Maud Gonne, who never accepted his love and engaged in too much politicking for his taste: "Why should I blame her that she filled my days / With misery, or that she would of late / Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways, / Or hurled the little streets upon the great, / Had they but courage equal to desire?" There is also the poet of conscience--and confrontation. His 1931 "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" ends: "Out of Ireland have we come. / Great hatred, little room, / Maimed us at the start. / I carried from my mother's womb / A fanatic heart." <P> Yeats was to explore several more sides of himself, and of Ireland, before his <i>Last Poems</i> of 1938-39. Many are difficult, some snobbish, others occult and spiritualist. As Brendan Kennelly writes, Yeats "produces both poppycock and sublimity in verse, sometimes closely together." On the other hand, many prophetic masterworks are poppycock-free--for example, "The Second Coming" ("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...") and such inquiries into inspiration as "Among School Children" ("O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?"). And at his best, Yeats extends the meaning of love poetry beyond the obviously romantic: love becomes a revolutionary emotion, attaching the poet to friends, history, and the passionate life of the mind. <P> Though this edition has been reset and revised, the changes are not as shocking as the 1984 edition, which included 100 extra pages of notes, changes in language and punctuation, and, most significantly, a redefinition of the <i>Last Poems</i>. Richard Finneran has had the courage to reorder the poems according to notes that Yeats made shortly before his death. Readers may be surprised to find that "Under Ben Bulben," the poet's powerful and self-mythologizing epitaph, no longer ends the collection, as it has for more than 30 years. In its place they will discover the wistful "Politics": "How can I, that girl standing there, / My attention fix / On Roman or on Russian / Or on Spanish politics..." Yet devotees of either ending will agree that this is a truly <i>necessary</i> volume--indeed, one of the few. As Seamus Heaney writes, "All readers of Yeats will need this book; when they open it they will feel a surprise like that experienced by St. Brendan the Navigator and his crew when they disembarked upon an island that turned out to be the back of a dormant sea monster." 803427 1984 The Poems (Everyman) total:9|5:7|4:0|3:2|2:0|1:0| 9 41 16 0 5 0 false false Sat Nov 07 19:15:38 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 07 19:15:38 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Mon Sep 14 06:26:56 -0700 2009 Mon Sep 14 06:26:56 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Fri Mar 06 08:30:16 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 06 08:30:16 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Tue Jan 20 07:30:39 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 20 07:30:39 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Fri Dec 05 02:14:28 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 05 02:14:28 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Fri Oct 24 11:35:11 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 24 11:35:11 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Sun Aug 17 01:10:29 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 17 01:10:29 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Fri May 30 10:35:29 -0700 2008 Fri May 30 10:35:29 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Sat Apr 05 13:35:55 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 05 13:35:55 -0700 2008 5 0 false false Mon Jan 28 19:42:09 -0800 2008 Mon Jan 28 19:42:09 -0800 2008 0 0 false false Fri Nov 23 11:33:46 -0800 2007 Fri Nov 23 11:33:49 -0800 2007 3 0 false false Tue Nov 06 08:36:20 -0800 2007 Tue Nov 06 08:36:20 -0800 2007 3 0 false false Thu Sep 27 12:56:46 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 12:56:46 -0700 2007 5 0 false false Thu Jul 26 12:48:29 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 26 12:48:29 -0700 2007 0 0 false false Tue May 08 13:52:34 -0700 2007 Tue May 08 13:52:34 -0700 2007 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=4228364