W.B. Yeats
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Hip Yeats |
Young Yeats |
Old Yeats
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1865-1939
In order to understand Yeats, you have to understand three things:
All of these things were continuing interests (even obsessions) for Yeats, and all proved strongly influential on his poetry. Yeats was born an Irish Protestant, in a time when the country was still entirely ruled by England. He died having served as a senator in the Parliament of a free Ireland. In the interim, he had seen tumultuous social change, including a thorough-going independence movement, bloody rebellions, and a civil war.
For Yeats, all these things--Ireland, Gonne, and mysticism--were intertwined. He met Maud through a fellow political activist, John O'Leary, and because of his lifelong attraction for her, he became even more deeply involved in the independence movement. Together, they explored the spiritual aspects of the movement, trying to find ways to be Irish in soul as well as nation. When Yeats later married Georgie Hyde-Lees, it was because of her strong connection to occult studies that she kept his attention from straying back to Maud.
With this as background, you should look at a couple of biographies to get more of the facts of his life:
Bio from the Academy of American poets
Bio from Online Literature.com
Bio of Yeats with attention to his mystical side
And, if you're interested in another famous Irish poet's take on Yeats, read Seamus Heaney's review of the new Yeats biography.
It also helps to pay attention to what part of Yeats's career each poem was written in: in his early writings, Yeats is very decidely a child of the Romantics, in his late work, he is more Modernist. These stylistic changes influence not only the kinds of poems he wrote, but the way he looked at the subjects of his poems; the later poems about Ireland are more critical than his early Irish mythic and pastoral work. Similarly his later poems about love and life are tempered by a more complex view of how emotions grow and fade over time.
Poems:
Leda and the Swan (in book) (Note on mythology)
Sailing to Byzantium (in book)
The Song of Wandering Aengus (in book)
Easter, 1916 (Historical Note)
Group poems:
The Second Coming (in book) (Group 1)
The Cold Heaven (Group 2)
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop (Group 3)
The Municipal Gallery Revisited (Group 4)
Lake Isle of Innisfree (in book) (Group 5)
Lapis Lazuli (Group 6)
The Wild Swans at Coole (Group 7)
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