Tóibín, Colm. “A Djinn speaks”. London Review of Books, pp. 19-24.
24
W. B. Yeats
-
Standard Name: Yeats, W. B.
Used Form: William Butler Yeats
Used Form: Willie Yeats
WBY
, who began publishing well before the end of the nineteenth century, is regarded as one of the most important twentieth-century poets in English, and one of the most international of Irish writers. He was early involved in the Irish Literary Revival, and wrote early, highly romantic lyrics on Celtic and fairy themes. Later he made poetry out of the search for a poetic language. Some of his later work is affected by his interest in the occult.
Connections
| Connections | Author name Sort descending | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| Family and Intimate relationships | Dorothy Wellesley | DW
's association with Yeats
, which lasted only the last three and a half years of his life, is treated by some commentators as a love-affair. |
| Friends, Associates | Dorothy Wellesley | She and Yeats
then spent Christmas Day and many evenings together. She records in her autobiography her visits on the days before his death on 28 January 1939, and some of his last sayings. She... |
| Textual Production | Dorothy Wellesley | On this date he received by post a ballad by her, a reverie upon the grave of a trio of lovers, possibly dating from or inspired by his stay at Penns the previous month. This... |
| Anthologization | Dorothy Wellesley | Horses, having gone forward into Poems of Ten Years, 1924-1934, was selected by W. B. Yeats
for The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1935, and by Philip Larkin
for The Oxford Book... |
| Literary responses | Dorothy Wellesley | During this correspondence Yeats
wrote to her expressing the highest opinion of her work, even when he was most earnestly bent on changing it. |
| Literary responses | Dorothy Wellesley | Horses did a great deal to ensure DW
's continuing reputation. Yeats
particularly praised the lines on the wild grey asses fleet / With stripe from head to tail, and moderate ears. Yeats, W. B., and Dorothy Wellesley. “Introduction”. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, Macmillan, p. vii - xv. ix |
| Theme or Topic Treated in Text | Dorothy Wellesley | The basic organization of Deserted House: Poem Sequence goes forward unaltered from its form as a separate volume, but Horses strangely becomes the last item in Trilogy II: Wine, and both Fire and Matrix... |
| Literary responses | Dorothy Wellesley | Yeats
later called this a long meditation, perhaps the most moving philosophic poem of our time. He found it moving precisely because its wisdom, like that of the sphinx, was animal below the waist.Its... |
| Literary responses | Dorothy Wellesley | Yeats
found and valued in DW
's work both descriptive genius Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford. Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/. |
| Literary responses | Dorothy Wellesley | Yeats
admired this volume for its explorations of the picturesque, for its love . . . for undisturbed Nature, a hatred for the abstract, the mechanical, the invented, and for an intensity which he saw... |
| Reception | Dorothy Wellesley | W. B. Yeats
, then aged seventy, discovered DW
's writing in 1935 when he was ill in bed and was at work on The Oxford Book of Modern Verse. He was feeling disillusioned... |
| Dedications | Dorothy Wellesley | This selection of poems (sometimes of excerpts) comes entirely from Poems of Ten Years, except for the opening piece, Fire: An Incantation, which was written in May 1935 Wellesley, Dorothy, and W. B. Yeats. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley. Macmillan. v, 11 |
| Textual Features | Dorothy Wellesley | Fire, addressed to Yeats
and headed with a quotation from Shakespeare
(Does not our life consist of the four elements?), Wellesley, Dorothy, and W. B. Yeats. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley. Macmillan. 1 |
| Friends, Associates | Dorothy Wellesley | DW
first met W. B. Yeats
, to her great excitement, when he invited himself to stay for a night at Penns in the Rocks; they became intimate friends. Yeats, W. B. Letters on Poetry from W.B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley. Editor Wellesley, Dorothy, Oxford University Press. 2 Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie. 162-3 |
| Literary responses | Dorothy Wellesley | Yeats
's introduction praised her for uniting a modern subject and vocabulary with traditional richness. Yeats, W. B., and Dorothy Wellesley. “Introduction”. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, Macmillan, p. vii - xv. x |
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