The sacred rose and the guns of love
View larger image at 5280 Lens Mafia… William and Maud I am haunted by numberless islands… – WB Yeats Walking by the shore at dusk, air leaden with a faith in words.
Read moreTag Archives: William Butler Yeats
St. Patrick’s Day: wearing o’ the black
In a very real way, the celebration of St. Patrick is a celebration of cultural genocide.
Read moreA poem for Tuesday
We love The Agonist. And we love poetry. So it’s only natural that we’d love The Agonist’s “A Poem for Tuesday” feature. Today Bruce Jacobs has some thoughts on one of my favorite poems ever, Yeats’ “The Second Coming.” By all means, click over there and have a look.
Read morePoem in Your Pocket Day: I can’t make up my mind…
As Chris noted earlier this morning, today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. The rules are simple enough, but I may need a bigger pocket. For one thing, I can’t make up my mind as to what my favorite poem is. And second, I have this bad tendency toward long poems. The wall on my office at work features portraits
Read moreTunesDay: name those bands…
…and win a prize! Recently I was moving into my new office and decided to do something at least a little interesting on my walls. First I put these together – artistic treatments of my four favorite poets: Eliot, Yeats, Thomas and Charles Wright, who is probably our greatest living versificationist.
Read moreTunesDay: that new old sound
If you pay attention to my music entries, you may have noticed a recurrent theme. It seems a lot of the bands I hear these days, many of which I really like, remind me of bands from the past. Like The Mary Onettes: I recently tripped across one such example, Sweden’s The Mary Onettes. They can’t seem to make up
Read moreWordsDay contest: you all lose
When we created the new WordsDay graphic above a few weeks back we challenged everybody to name all the authors. Some of you took a shot, and I think the best set of guesses got about 10 of 15 right. So, for those of you who have been dying of curiosity, here are the answers. Left to right: William Butler
Read moreArtSunday: Impressionism exhibit offers a lesson in tradition and rebellion
[An artist] should copy the masters and re-copy them, and after he has given every evidence of being a good copyist, he might then reasonably be allowed to do a radish, perhaps, from Nature. – Edgar Degas I went to see the “Inspiring Impressionism” exhibit yesterday at the Denver Art Museum and came away struck by how remarkably it addressed
Read moreVerseDay: The poet in love
I’ve long been convinced of two truths regarding poetry: 1: The easiest thing in the world to write is a love poem. 2: The hardest thing in the world to write is a good love poem. Accordingly, I admire the hell out of a writer who can produce a tribute to his/her eternal love without making me a little sick
Read moreWilliam Butler Yeats: the soul of the warrior
I recall once hearing in a lecture that the Easter Rising rebels were influenced by the poetry of William Butler Yeats, and that they perhaps even read his work amongst themselves during the seven days they occupied Dublin’s General Post Office in April 1916. I can’t find a source to verify that they were reading Yeats while awaiting slaughter, but
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lullaby pit 