The Later Affluence of W. B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens

by Edward Clarke

Surveying the later work of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens, Edward Clarke unfolds their very last poems and considers the two poets' relations with western literature and tradition. This book shows how these two latecomers transform the ways in which we read earlier poets.

264 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 11, 2011

Reviews

[Bucky McMahon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Literary criticism that reads like a thriller? Weeeellll....not exactly. I found TLAWBWS grindingly difficult, and myself to be poorly prepared for the onslaught of allusions (particularly to Milton and Wordsworth), as well as the references to some of the more arcane poetic techniques. Yet Mr. Clarke is surely onto something, even if it's something damnably difficult--a sort of yogic/poetic endgame of which Yeats and Stevens became maestros. These poets, in their "later affluence" (a richness of learning and feeling, I think is meant) were hunting big game indeed, der Boogie Man, Dr. D, the fella what killed Buffalo Bill, an illusion, albeit a very convincing one. Creative imagination is the saving power, and because these poets continued to practice right up to the point of death, they bequeathed us something like a secular (globally syncretic, anyway) humanist equivalent of the Tibetan BooK of the Dead. That's not all, of course. Their later affluence weaves a tapestry of insights that are lookouts onto life and reality, capitalized or in quotes. Mr. Clarke is a vastly learned docent for this tour of two great minds; however, as skillfully as he paraphrases and explicates, when the creative imagination achieves escape velocity and becomes Vision, it's rocket science.