At the expense of belittling my heroine, Genny, we notice she is and always was subject to nympholeptic crushes. It is currently the basis of her problematic relationship with Jonathan. But she started early. In high school. On William Butler Yeats. Unreasonable then, unreasonable now. But if poets were reasonable, where would their art be?
So at the risk of repeating myself, to open chapter 9, where Genny begins her love story, I have given you another Irish poet, another idol, another Nobel Prize for Literature winner, another Abbey Theatre founder, another dramatist, another lyric genius – all wrapped up in William Butler Yeats. “I kissed a stone I lay stretched out in the dirt And I cried tears down.” Is his introduction to chapter 9.
He wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of modern times, a lot of it focused on the mundane. Go find the seven brash and vigorous poems in his “Crazy Jane” series for proof of the mundane. Crazy is an old peasant woman. Unglamorous but insightful:
read Crazy Jane and the Bishop where she describes his skin as “wrinkled like the foot of a goose”
read Crazy Jane on God where she observes that “men come, men go; all things remain in God”
read Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgment where she decides that love is all unsatisfied that cannot take the whole”
read Crazy Jane on the Mountain where she confesses to being tired of cursing the bishop
read Crazy Jane Reproved where she advises “never hang your heart upon a roaring, ranting journeyman”
read Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop who notes that “those breasts are flat and fallen now, those veins must soon be dry”
Glance down my list of elegant coupling of words for proof of the beauty in Yeats’ words:
“dancing to a frenzied drum”
“an image of air”
“moments of glad grace”
“the tall and the tufted reeds”
“in the deeps of my heart”
“the ravens of unresting thought”
“the mackerel-crowded seas”
“that famous harmony of leaves”
“tumult in the clouds”
“the balloon of the mind”
To top off the beauty, indulge in these words: “I carry the sun in a golden cup, The moon in a silver bag”
Yeats of course gave us “Cast a cold eye On life, on death, Horseman, pass by!” You have quoted that; I have quoted that; everyone has quoted it. We are all Yeats aficionados.
Here’s more you’ll want to quote: “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.” And “Was there ever a dog that praised his fleas?” And “Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.” And “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” And “The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.”
The Atlantic Monthly described Yeats as a rarified human being, tall, dark-visaged, walking the streets of Dublin and London in a poetic hat, cloak and flowing tie, intoning verses. With these verses he intended to move the peasants and the educated in Ireland, expressing primary truths about his people. His earliest poems were romantic and took his public to foreign landscapes. Later he became more lyrical and dramatic and moved to naturalness, sincerity and vigor. Always he affirmed his Irish nationality when others of his class – the Anglo-Irish – considered themselves truly Englishmen merely living in Ireland. His rhythm and the repetition of sounds paid homage to that Gaelic heritage. His preference was for rhyme and strict stanza form, unlike his contemporary poets and those who followed.
What we can all take from Yeats is his disuse of adverbs. Try writing without adverbs. It will tighten up your images. Nouns, verbs and adjectives – there’s where the power is. However, Yeats did say “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” So there.