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Poetry, Drama and Prose
This brand new collection, impeccably edited by James Pethica, presents a comprehensive selection of Yeats's major contributions in poetry, drama, prose fiction, autobiography, and criticism.
"Criticism" includes twenty-four interpretive essays by T. S. Eliot, Daniel Albright, Douglas Archibald, Harold Bloom, George Bornstein, Elizabeth Cullingford, Paul de Man, Richard Ellman, R. F. Foster, Stephen Gwynn, Seamus Heaney, Marjorie Howes, John Kelly, Declan Kiberd, Lucy McDiarmid, Michael North, Thomas Parkinson, Marjorie Perloff, James Pethica, Jahan Ramazani, Ronald Schuchard, Michael J. Sidnell, Anita Sokolsky, and Helen Vendler.A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.
518 pages, Paperback
First published March 19, 2000
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About the author
W.B. Yeats
2,039 books2,572 followersWilliam Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia
Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
October 7, 2008
It's Yeats. I had the help of a professor to get me through this volume, thankfully, because you need to know a lot about Irish history and Yeats' philosophy to even barely understand his poetry. I was reminded of one of my favorite Yeats poems recently when I read it in "The Lake of Dead Languages" by Goodman. Here's the last stanza:
"I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."
"I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."
December 11, 2012
For the selections I read, I would give this collection about a 3.5, but looking at it as an entire overview of Yeat's major works along with critical background I went with 4 stars rather than 3. I am a big fan of Norton critical editions (I've been a Norton supporter since undergrad), because they tend to pull together a lot of interesting and relevant background and critical material in addition to some of the most important and influential texts in the field of English lit.
As far as the Yeats collection goes, I like Yeats, but I am not a huge poetry fan. I think poetry requires a way of thinking that I'm simply not that accustomed to from reading plays and novels. Some of the poems here I love--"The Second Coming," "September, 1916," for instance--but then others simply didn't do anything for me. I think a lot of the poems, especially those written to or about Maude Gonne, required a much more detailed background knowledge than I have (or the editors hinted at) in order to understand the allusions.
With the plays (much more my line), I like them, but Yeats was fundamentally not a playwright. As with a number of poets who also wrote plays (see T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral), some of Yeat's plays sound more like poems with staging than actual plays. "On Baile's Strand," for instance, requires a lot of exposition, which means the entire opening section involves fairly little action. On the other hand, "Cathleen ni Houlihan" is an awesome play.
As far as the Yeats collection goes, I like Yeats, but I am not a huge poetry fan. I think poetry requires a way of thinking that I'm simply not that accustomed to from reading plays and novels. Some of the poems here I love--"The Second Coming," "September, 1916," for instance--but then others simply didn't do anything for me. I think a lot of the poems, especially those written to or about Maude Gonne, required a much more detailed background knowledge than I have (or the editors hinted at) in order to understand the allusions.
With the plays (much more my line), I like them, but Yeats was fundamentally not a playwright. As with a number of poets who also wrote plays (see T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral), some of Yeat's plays sound more like poems with staging than actual plays. "On Baile's Strand," for instance, requires a lot of exposition, which means the entire opening section involves fairly little action. On the other hand, "Cathleen ni Houlihan" is an awesome play.
April 12, 2009
Honk if you're Irish.
April 18, 2025
There is something impersonal and a little biblical about most of Yeats's work, almost as if he is looking past the reader at some intended audience off in the distance.
November 24, 2017
It is difficult to know what to say about a writer as iconic as Yeats, and of course the poems speak for themselves (for better in most cases, for worse in some), so what I suppose this volume contributes, like most Norton Critical Editions, is a one-volume precis of sorts designed to whet the appetite of the would-be scholar or satisfy that of the less avidly interested reader of letters. This volume does an admirable job of providing substantial, but not overwhelming, examples of Yeats' poetry, plays, and prose as well as a representative sample of the kind of critical reaction his work and legacy have generated. His flaws as a writer, thinker, and man are all also on fairly full display here, and if the volume has a flaw it may be that in making so much of his feet of clay one begins to wonder from time to time how he ever came to be an idol in the first place, at which point one needs to return to the poems. Just as it is hard for many not to want to forgive Beethoven everything for having bequeathed the 9th Symphony to humanity, so too for me it is hard not to respond with a shrug of the shoulders to Yeats' many critics, to point to the text of The Second Coming or some other such remarkable poem, and to say, "if you ever produce anything anywhere near that good, perhaps I will take some interest in what you have to say of the man."
August 10, 2007
i don't know if it was plath who brought me to yeats or vice versa; that one is a bit like the chicken and the egg. at the end of the day though i guess it doesn't really matter, because both are really tasty.
so does that make plath fried chicken and yeats scrambled eggs, or vice versa?
oh, right. enough of that line of thought. i think yeats would be smacking his forehead right now if he read this.
to say something worthwhile, the second coming is a brutal masterpiece, but that's not all he has to offer. if i had the book in front of me right now i could be more specific - i'll try to remember to do that at some point. but come on, any guy that proposes to the same person 4 times only to be rejected again and again is bound to have some interesting things to say.
in all seriousness, one of my life goals is to visit 23 fitzroy road in london. to think that two amazing writers lived in the same place really tickles my fancy.
so does that make plath fried chicken and yeats scrambled eggs, or vice versa?
oh, right. enough of that line of thought. i think yeats would be smacking his forehead right now if he read this.
to say something worthwhile, the second coming is a brutal masterpiece, but that's not all he has to offer. if i had the book in front of me right now i could be more specific - i'll try to remember to do that at some point. but come on, any guy that proposes to the same person 4 times only to be rejected again and again is bound to have some interesting things to say.
in all seriousness, one of my life goals is to visit 23 fitzroy road in london. to think that two amazing writers lived in the same place really tickles my fancy.
June 3, 2021
This is designed as the text for a college course on Yeats, with of course some great poems, a lot of other poems that do nothing for me, snippets from some of his drama and prose, and (about a third of the book) extracts from critical work about Yeats of the sort I find incredibly dreary. God only knows why I stuck it out to the end.
August 17, 2008
Mostly read the poetry. I prefer the early Yeats, which is more lyric and stereotypically fairies, misty lakes, and Erie.
January 4, 2011
Well, mostly loved the poetry!
August 14, 2019
Not a big fan of Yeats. To really understand Yates, you really need a good understanding of the occult.
March 26, 2022
Yeats has a vital reputation in the 20th Century world of literature, and despite my pronounced interest in Irish Literature, I have never shown much interest in his work. I decided to read this volume because I wanted to, well, know what the hell he was about.
His early poetry leaves a lot to be desired - W.B. sure pined over and failed in his quest to find women. He has many simpering love ballads in this work that don't really reach the heights of great poetry. They're quite pedestrian, actually - almost as if written by a novice. What was quite fascinating about these poems was how Yeats ended up reworking them into different, sharper poems. You can see his poetic development over his career from some of these rewrites: an eye for sharper, more concrete imagery, ambiguous language that multiplies the poem's implications, and much more! At least for Yeats, he was never one to admit that a poem was "done," and was humble enough to go back and rework them again.
********************
Some of the mid to later poems are a bit better, with commentary on Irish Nationalism, the relationship between art and poetry and Irish politics, and some of that ol' bitter sweet Lovin' that Yeats couldn't quite get a handle on in his life. Personally, I find the poems where Yeats is most incisive in his imagery and word choices are his best. The gritty ones, in a word.
********************
One criticism I have is some of the prose entries in this collection, in particular the paper titled "A Vision." This paper is viewed as an important one in Yeats's corpus, where he explores "automatic writing," as well as his theory of world-historical gyres as representative of eras passing out of fashion. Perhaps more than 1-page might have been good?
********************
"The Second Coming" is a famous Yeats poem, though I think that it is famous more so for its imagery and implications than it is for being a truly astounding work. I first encountered it in 1st year undergrad where we meandered through what it was without just getting to the bloody point - that it's about the decline of old world values and the arrival of something new that could be a signal of an objective scientific age, but could be something far worse and sinister. A poem for the apocalypse, as it were, though that is a somewhat trite generalization. I think it's more famous for being programmatically modernist than being some of Yeats's best work - though it is heavily anthologized.
********************
The rest of the volume is pretty good. I think that for Yeats he reached his high-point in artistic achievement with the publication of the 'The Tower' - "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Tower," "Leda and the Swan," and some others are among his greatest works. Yeats was a writer who didn't have truly what I would call a systematic program of poetry where full sequences or collections of poems are indisputably revolutionary. The revolutions work in steps with Yeats, just as T.S. Eliot defines in his somewhat condescending, yet revealing essay included in this volume.
Perhaps I am unfair to Yeats, and should read him again. Likely I will, but his work on this first read was not totally convincing or revelatory for me at least.
His early poetry leaves a lot to be desired - W.B. sure pined over and failed in his quest to find women. He has many simpering love ballads in this work that don't really reach the heights of great poetry. They're quite pedestrian, actually - almost as if written by a novice. What was quite fascinating about these poems was how Yeats ended up reworking them into different, sharper poems. You can see his poetic development over his career from some of these rewrites: an eye for sharper, more concrete imagery, ambiguous language that multiplies the poem's implications, and much more! At least for Yeats, he was never one to admit that a poem was "done," and was humble enough to go back and rework them again.
********************
Some of the mid to later poems are a bit better, with commentary on Irish Nationalism, the relationship between art and poetry and Irish politics, and some of that ol' bitter sweet Lovin' that Yeats couldn't quite get a handle on in his life. Personally, I find the poems where Yeats is most incisive in his imagery and word choices are his best. The gritty ones, in a word.
********************
One criticism I have is some of the prose entries in this collection, in particular the paper titled "A Vision." This paper is viewed as an important one in Yeats's corpus, where he explores "automatic writing," as well as his theory of world-historical gyres as representative of eras passing out of fashion. Perhaps more than 1-page might have been good?
********************
"The Second Coming" is a famous Yeats poem, though I think that it is famous more so for its imagery and implications than it is for being a truly astounding work. I first encountered it in 1st year undergrad where we meandered through what it was without just getting to the bloody point - that it's about the decline of old world values and the arrival of something new that could be a signal of an objective scientific age, but could be something far worse and sinister. A poem for the apocalypse, as it were, though that is a somewhat trite generalization. I think it's more famous for being programmatically modernist than being some of Yeats's best work - though it is heavily anthologized.
********************
The rest of the volume is pretty good. I think that for Yeats he reached his high-point in artistic achievement with the publication of the 'The Tower' - "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Tower," "Leda and the Swan," and some others are among his greatest works. Yeats was a writer who didn't have truly what I would call a systematic program of poetry where full sequences or collections of poems are indisputably revolutionary. The revolutions work in steps with Yeats, just as T.S. Eliot defines in his somewhat condescending, yet revealing essay included in this volume.
Perhaps I am unfair to Yeats, and should read him again. Likely I will, but his work on this first read was not totally convincing or revelatory for me at least.
October 31, 2018
William Butler Yeats was one of the few influential and popular Irish poets of his time, which was the late 1800s and early 1900s. Along with Synge, and few others, he spearheaded a movement from Romantic poetry to a more political stand, helped to co-found the Abbey Theatre, and was an outspoken activist towards the preservation of Irish culture, myth, folklore, legend, and individuality.
Most of his early works are centered around the Irish folklore and was heavy handed with the Romantic touch that he later regretted. He found it a bit too hokey in his later years, but it was nonetheless beautiful poetry and writing. Into his 20s, he met Maud Gonne, and his lifelong obsession with her began. Beautiful, a political, outspoken woman, and apparently quite tall, he was infatuated with her, but Maud only ever kept poor "Willie" at arm's length. Seeking something he could not have, he even went so far as to propose to Maud's daughter. His psychosis with her was a bit disturbing, but it fathered a great number of works centered around Maud, her representation of a dying Ireland, and his infatuation.
Later on, his works more poignantly brought to bear the nation's crises situations, the political activism associated with it, and his stance on how Ireland should be represented. He completely turns his back on the Romantic heavy-handedness of his earlier works, but continually manages to remain fresh, with bold verbiage and style.
Highly celebrated in his time, and after, he has become an appropriate stone to stand upon and learn from for the sake of Ireland's history and also the culture surrounding its growth. From the tales of Cuchulainn to the political atmosphere of freedom and independence, Yeats stood out amongst the crowd well into his later years, continually forcing unpopular subjects to the forefront with creativity and semantic prowess.
Most of his early works are centered around the Irish folklore and was heavy handed with the Romantic touch that he later regretted. He found it a bit too hokey in his later years, but it was nonetheless beautiful poetry and writing. Into his 20s, he met Maud Gonne, and his lifelong obsession with her began. Beautiful, a political, outspoken woman, and apparently quite tall, he was infatuated with her, but Maud only ever kept poor "Willie" at arm's length. Seeking something he could not have, he even went so far as to propose to Maud's daughter. His psychosis with her was a bit disturbing, but it fathered a great number of works centered around Maud, her representation of a dying Ireland, and his infatuation.
Later on, his works more poignantly brought to bear the nation's crises situations, the political activism associated with it, and his stance on how Ireland should be represented. He completely turns his back on the Romantic heavy-handedness of his earlier works, but continually manages to remain fresh, with bold verbiage and style.
Highly celebrated in his time, and after, he has become an appropriate stone to stand upon and learn from for the sake of Ireland's history and also the culture surrounding its growth. From the tales of Cuchulainn to the political atmosphere of freedom and independence, Yeats stood out amongst the crowd well into his later years, continually forcing unpopular subjects to the forefront with creativity and semantic prowess.
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December 18, 2019Top 15 Yeats Poems
15-The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes
14-Coole Park, 1929
13- The White Birds
12- The Song of Wandering Aengus
11-Men Admiring Themselves in the Water
10-The Fisherman (The Fish)
9-The Sad Shepard
8-Coole Park, 1929
7- The Magi and The Dolls
6-The Wild Swans at Coole
5-The Second Coming
4- An Airman Foresees his Death
3-On being asked for a War Poem
2-The Great Day
1-Leda and the Swan
Best Plays: On Baile’s Strand, At Hawk’s Well
Maud Gonne on Yeats: “His search for hidden knowledge had led him so far along storage paths that he at times almost forgot the object of his quest”
When it comes to Yeats, shorter is quite often leagues better.
Notes on his plays below:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hdbbqo6zc0d...
15-The Cloak, the Boat, and the Shoes
14-Coole Park, 1929
13- The White Birds
12- The Song of Wandering Aengus
11-Men Admiring Themselves in the Water
10-The Fisherman (The Fish)
9-The Sad Shepard
8-Coole Park, 1929
7- The Magi and The Dolls
6-The Wild Swans at Coole
5-The Second Coming
4- An Airman Foresees his Death
3-On being asked for a War Poem
2-The Great Day
1-Leda and the Swan
Best Plays: On Baile’s Strand, At Hawk’s Well
Maud Gonne on Yeats: “His search for hidden knowledge had led him so far along storage paths that he at times almost forgot the object of his quest”
When it comes to Yeats, shorter is quite often leagues better.
Notes on his plays below:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hdbbqo6zc0d...
August 20, 2023
Ultimately, Yeats is astonishingly beautiful. The work he produced in the middle of his life is a bit…..poor. Owing to the fact that his poems from that era boiled down to “woe is me, she doesn’t love me, I am useless and sad” which gets old. But everything surrounding that time period is just gorgeous.
July 26, 2018
This is a very good introduction to Yeats' works. Liked it so much I ended up getting a complete volume of his works.
June 19, 2021
The plot is undeabledy well.
April 28, 2022
An fine collection of W.B Yeats work, with some very informative essays
March 8, 2009
Sometimes, I really wish Yeats had never written prose. Or plays. His poetry is quite good, obviously, although I know that I find him very difficult to read because it is nearly impossible for me to find the rhythm of his language (with very few exceptions). Still, this is a good selection of poems etc and the background information (except for one or two literary crit pieces that are a little too "this is a piece of literary criticism!") is very handy. Good footnotes, which I always appreciate!
April 1, 2007
Great collection, containing not only some of Yeats' best poems but also his prose and critical essays.
February 26, 2008
Yeats isn't much of a playwright, but his poetry is amazing, and hard...hence the Nobel Prize attached to his name. His poetry is still quoted today!
May 31, 2009
Yeats is a good poet but I'm not a huge fan. His works can be a bit too modern for me.
November 8, 2010
Oh Yeats, I do love you. I did get a bit tired of Maud and Ireland by the end though.
October 26, 2011
I wish I had half the patriotism Yeats has in his works.
December 3, 2015
Love him <3
November 25, 2015
This is by far one of the best collections I've run across.
September 30, 2022
Fit like a puzzle. Enjoyable and satisfying
December 7, 2008
I wouldn't know of, or the meaning of, "gyre" without this man. Eternal.
April 25, 2017
It was interesting I could read poems several times though poetry isn't my forte
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews