100 Selected Poems

by W.B. Yeats

The mastermind behind the Irish literary Renaissance, William Butler Yeats had a remarkable literary career spanning across five decades. This collectable edition brings together his early poems along with some of his finest verses composed in the years following his Nobel Prize. It includes The Wanderings of Oisin, The Sad Shepherd , The Stolen Child , The Lake of Innisfree , The Sorrow of Love , When You Are Old , An Irish Airman foresees his Death , The Second Coming , Sailing to Byzantium , Leda and the Swan and Byzantium . Each poem gives an insight into Yeats beliefs, philosophy and also the times in which he wrote. Each is a specimen of his exquisite craftsmanship.

Genres: Poetry

308 pages, Hardcover

Published January 12, 2018

About the author

William 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

Reviews

[Maha · Rating 4 out of 5]

“And may these characters remain
When all is ruin once again.”

[Sinch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeats is a poet whose mastery of language is seldom debated about. This collection allowed me to understand his writings and mark their changes over the course of those not-so-fine years for him. The trajectory starts with poems where Yeats takes us into the rich landscape of Irish mythology to ones written in the latter half of his life, where due to influences of writers like Ezra Pound, they became increasingly political. His preoccupations with love, beauty, mythology, religion, old age, politics are all visible, the bare bones exposed.

Naturally, I've also come to learn a lot about Yeats as a person- his personal philosophy and his outlook on life. As much as I would readily disagree with some of his views, I can't help but beat this feeling of wanting to call him daddy. I'd let the man smash me to smithereens with his framed spectacles and thick Irish accent. My fantasies elude me and I digress. Anyway, I read these poems armed with a highlighter and a pen; safe to say, I've run out of ink now. And that speaks for his command over the craft.

[Clay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. I was looking forward to removing one of my literary blind spots by finally reading a collection of poems by Yeats, but I found them trivial and uninteresting. I was expecting his work to be much more sophisticated. Oh, will. On to Keats.