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W.B. Yeats, A Life #2
W.B. Yeats, A Life: The Arch-Poet, 1915-1939
The first volume in Roy Foster's magisterial biography of W.B. Yeats was hailed as "a work of huge significance" ( The Atlantic Monthly ) and "a stupendous historiographical feat" ( Irish Sunday Independent ). Now, the eagerly awaited second volume explores the complex poetic, political, and personal intricacies of Yeats's dramatic final decades, a period that saw the Easter Rebellion, the founding of the Irish state in 1922, and the production of Yeats's greatest masterpieces.
In the conclusion of this first fully authorized biography, Foster brilliantly illuminates the circumstances--the rich internal and external experiences--that shaped the great poetry of Yeats's later years: "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Tower," "The Circus Animals Desertion," "Under Ben Bulben," and many others. Yeats's pursuit of Irish nationalism and an independent Irish culture, his continued search for supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, a series of tempestuous love affairs, and his lingering obsession with Maud Gonne are all explored here with a nuance and awareness rare in literary biography. Foster gives us the very texture of Yeats's life and thought, revealing the many ways he made poetry out of the "quarrel" with himself and the upheaval around him. But this consummate biography also shows that Yeats was much more than simply a lyric poet and examines in great detail Yeats's non-poetic work--his essays,
plays, polemics, and memoirs. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers, family, collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment and verve; while the poet himself is shown returning again and again to his governing preoccupations, sex and death.
Based on complete and unprecedented access to Yeats's papers and written with extraordinary grace and insight, W.B. Yeats, A Life offers the fullest portrait yet of the private and public life of one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.
In the conclusion of this first fully authorized biography, Foster brilliantly illuminates the circumstances--the rich internal and external experiences--that shaped the great poetry of Yeats's later years: "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Sailing to Byzantium," "The Tower," "The Circus Animals Desertion," "Under Ben Bulben," and many others. Yeats's pursuit of Irish nationalism and an independent Irish culture, his continued search for supernatural truths through occult experimentation, his extraordinary marriage, a series of tempestuous love affairs, and his lingering obsession with Maud Gonne are all explored here with a nuance and awareness rare in literary biography. Foster gives us the very texture of Yeats's life and thought, revealing the many ways he made poetry out of the "quarrel" with himself and the upheaval around him. But this consummate biography also shows that Yeats was much more than simply a lyric poet and examines in great detail Yeats's non-poetic work--his essays,
plays, polemics, and memoirs. The enormous and varied circle of Yeats's friends, lovers, family, collaborators and antagonists inhabit and enrich a personal world of astounding energy, artistic commitment and verve; while the poet himself is shown returning again and again to his governing preoccupations, sex and death.
Based on complete and unprecedented access to Yeats's papers and written with extraordinary grace and insight, W.B. Yeats, A Life offers the fullest portrait yet of the private and public life of one of the twentieth century's greatest poets.
856 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 4, 2019
At some point in life, the person of even modest ambition must confront his limitations. At the very least, time on earth is finite. Some balance between family and work must be struck, however lopsided, and as age creeps in, so must health be provisioned for. For the poet, middle age can be deceiving, as poetry can be written and written well in old age, and the desire to live life to the lees can incur a certain degree of distraction, especially for the poet who has achieved early success.
For Yeats, heading into his 50th year, biographer R.F. Foster identifies the fulcrum, the inflection point at which Yeats would reconfigure his life in hopes of maximizing his impact and legacy. This is where his spellbinding and utterly captivating volume two begins. In the opening chapters, Yeats expands his friendship and collaboration with Ezra Pound. Rejected for the last time by Maud Gonne, Yeats considers marrying her daughter Isuelt, but ultimately and wisely chooses from Pound’s London, courting the young Englishwoman Georgie Hyde-Lees, who serves for several years as Yeats’ personal medium before switching jobs to child-rearer, personal secretary, and eldercare provider--the last being the inevitable result of marrying a woman less than half your age.
Foster documents other shrewd decisions by Yeats. He capitalizes on the Irish War of Independence and resulting Free State with timely poetry and brief service as a senator, which he uses to centralize his literary power in Dublin and place himself at the head of various literary bodies and salons. When his health declines, he decisively bows out and spends more time abroad, starting with Pound’s slice of expat Rappallo, Italy.
His political views also show a man ruthlessly marshalling his slowing energies, as he attempts to juice himself up with fascism in the last decade of his life, including a dalliance with the Irish Blueshirts, an Irish right-wing militia infatuated with Mussolini. Yeats never succumbs to antisemitism or full-throat Nazism, but grows increasingly nasty--and oddly productive--by viewing Ireland’s history and politics along racial and caste divides. While it is sad to see him seduced by some of the worst and most vile ideas the world has ever known, the impact on his poetry will always be a matter of debate. Yeats is a complex intelligence, and the belligerent man produced over his last two decades some of the finest poems of the 20th century, such as “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”, “Leda and the Swan”, “Sailing to Byzantium”, “Byzantium”, “Lapis Lazuli”, “Cuchulain Comforted”, and “Under Ben Bulben”. These poems betray increasing whifs of Modernism’s racial nationalism, the poison ideology that broke Pound’s mind and tainted Eliot’s soul. But Yeat’s Romanticism never really succumbed. The wellspring of creativity, faith, and self-discovery keep renewing themselves even as Yeats faces his own sickness unto death. Foster, without explicitly stating it, manifestly advances the argument that old Yeats is best Yeats.
Indeed, compared to volume one, Foster is more willing to provide gloss, counterbalancing his own judgement against major critical reaction of the time. Context is ample from letters, drafts, and personal circumstances leading to each major poem. The genesis of each poetry book--The Tower, The Winding Stair, A Vision, Last Poems--are given in detail. Yeats’ second tour in the States is marvelously chronicled; Foster excerpts letters and notes taken from lecture attendees and socialites, plucking from sources I surmise were previously unheard of. Foster’s appetite for primary-source material is all-encompassing. It’s like reading from inside a cyclone.
Foster gives us the dirt, too. Yeats makes a hash of his charge as editor of The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, including too much of poetry of friends, facilitators, or lovers, while committing serious and glaring omissions. Family friend and minor light Oliver St. John Gogarty is quoted as remarking, “What right have I to figure so bulkily?” Thanks to Foster, we can see exactly how Yeats’ social, sexual, and financial well-being depended on those he lavished pages on, and how he felt absolutely no compunction to be “objective”. So little has changed since his era of poet-editors and our own.
We are shown Yeats’ sexual powers failing in his waning years, and his desperate attempts to keep his mojo working as he plies his favors in literary and spiritualist London, conjuring a few women with the willingness and financial means to put up with him while he wife looks on bemusedly from a distance.
Foster takes the time to write his own cycle of elegies for Yeats’ friends--the death of Lady Gregory and George Russell are handled with special depth and understanding. When it is the Arch-Poet’s turn, Foster stays with the plot until the very end. No spoilers here, but it is clear Foster has difficulty giving up what has been an epic vigil.
For Yeats, heading into his 50th year, biographer R.F. Foster identifies the fulcrum, the inflection point at which Yeats would reconfigure his life in hopes of maximizing his impact and legacy. This is where his spellbinding and utterly captivating volume two begins. In the opening chapters, Yeats expands his friendship and collaboration with Ezra Pound. Rejected for the last time by Maud Gonne, Yeats considers marrying her daughter Isuelt, but ultimately and wisely chooses from Pound’s London, courting the young Englishwoman Georgie Hyde-Lees, who serves for several years as Yeats’ personal medium before switching jobs to child-rearer, personal secretary, and eldercare provider--the last being the inevitable result of marrying a woman less than half your age.
Foster documents other shrewd decisions by Yeats. He capitalizes on the Irish War of Independence and resulting Free State with timely poetry and brief service as a senator, which he uses to centralize his literary power in Dublin and place himself at the head of various literary bodies and salons. When his health declines, he decisively bows out and spends more time abroad, starting with Pound’s slice of expat Rappallo, Italy.
His political views also show a man ruthlessly marshalling his slowing energies, as he attempts to juice himself up with fascism in the last decade of his life, including a dalliance with the Irish Blueshirts, an Irish right-wing militia infatuated with Mussolini. Yeats never succumbs to antisemitism or full-throat Nazism, but grows increasingly nasty--and oddly productive--by viewing Ireland’s history and politics along racial and caste divides. While it is sad to see him seduced by some of the worst and most vile ideas the world has ever known, the impact on his poetry will always be a matter of debate. Yeats is a complex intelligence, and the belligerent man produced over his last two decades some of the finest poems of the 20th century, such as “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”, “Leda and the Swan”, “Sailing to Byzantium”, “Byzantium”, “Lapis Lazuli”, “Cuchulain Comforted”, and “Under Ben Bulben”. These poems betray increasing whifs of Modernism’s racial nationalism, the poison ideology that broke Pound’s mind and tainted Eliot’s soul. But Yeat’s Romanticism never really succumbed. The wellspring of creativity, faith, and self-discovery keep renewing themselves even as Yeats faces his own sickness unto death. Foster, without explicitly stating it, manifestly advances the argument that old Yeats is best Yeats.
Indeed, compared to volume one, Foster is more willing to provide gloss, counterbalancing his own judgement against major critical reaction of the time. Context is ample from letters, drafts, and personal circumstances leading to each major poem. The genesis of each poetry book--The Tower, The Winding Stair, A Vision, Last Poems--are given in detail. Yeats’ second tour in the States is marvelously chronicled; Foster excerpts letters and notes taken from lecture attendees and socialites, plucking from sources I surmise were previously unheard of. Foster’s appetite for primary-source material is all-encompassing. It’s like reading from inside a cyclone.
Foster gives us the dirt, too. Yeats makes a hash of his charge as editor of The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, including too much of poetry of friends, facilitators, or lovers, while committing serious and glaring omissions. Family friend and minor light Oliver St. John Gogarty is quoted as remarking, “What right have I to figure so bulkily?” Thanks to Foster, we can see exactly how Yeats’ social, sexual, and financial well-being depended on those he lavished pages on, and how he felt absolutely no compunction to be “objective”. So little has changed since his era of poet-editors and our own.
We are shown Yeats’ sexual powers failing in his waning years, and his desperate attempts to keep his mojo working as he plies his favors in literary and spiritualist London, conjuring a few women with the willingness and financial means to put up with him while he wife looks on bemusedly from a distance.
Foster takes the time to write his own cycle of elegies for Yeats’ friends--the death of Lady Gregory and George Russell are handled with special depth and understanding. When it is the Arch-Poet’s turn, Foster stays with the plot until the very end. No spoilers here, but it is clear Foster has difficulty giving up what has been an epic vigil.
October 14, 2019
Volume II, and here Yeats has become the grand old man, the central figure of modern Irish literature and drama. There is an enormous amount of detail about the creation and productions of the Abbey Theatre. It is very possible that might be way too much for many readers.
But through it all, and through all of the messiness of the Irish revolution and Civil War, the poems kept coming. Yes, as Foster shows us, many of them are tied to the moments in history, or Yeats' adventures in the occult, and become clearer once all that is explained by the biographer. But the poems still have their connections to readers -- does "The Second Coming," for instance need to be explained? No, but the explanations offer another dimension.
And then there is the inevitable decline of old age. Yeats kept working very close to the dark, much closer than most poets. He clearly had some ideal image of "the poem." He kept looking for it right up to the end.
There was a real joy in reading these two volumes, all the hundreds and hundreds of pages in them.
But through it all, and through all of the messiness of the Irish revolution and Civil War, the poems kept coming. Yes, as Foster shows us, many of them are tied to the moments in history, or Yeats' adventures in the occult, and become clearer once all that is explained by the biographer. But the poems still have their connections to readers -- does "The Second Coming," for instance need to be explained? No, but the explanations offer another dimension.
And then there is the inevitable decline of old age. Yeats kept working very close to the dark, much closer than most poets. He clearly had some ideal image of "the poem." He kept looking for it right up to the end.
There was a real joy in reading these two volumes, all the hundreds and hundreds of pages in them.
July 7, 2010
This is the heavyweight concluding volume of a huge biography. It's detail of every turn of the man's life and the critical evaluation of the work make it comprehensive and impressive. Yeats would rightly think he deserved a monumantal biography of this scope. I can't imagine another biography of him being more encompassing of his life and times. I'm not much of a Yeats fan. Such formal poetry is that form I least admire though I understand it to be brilliant. However, I admire Foster's work as exceptional biography. When I read biography it's this thoroughness and ardent immersion in subject I most want to spend time with.
August 28, 2025
Together, the last few chapters of The Apprentice Mage and the first ~half of The Arch-poet are an unbelievably good portrait of a creative
hitting his fucking stride
, having a miracle period akin to Einstein c. 1905–1917 or James Brown c. 1967–1971. ‘You were silly like us: your gift survived it all’ is exactly wrong, and my main takeaway from Foster’s two volumes is the realisation that Yeats’ gift did not ‘survive’ in spite of his silliness but emerged from it: a big part of his greatness was the proportion (certainly not 100%, but greater than chance?) of his silly obsessions and decisions which turned out in hindsight to somehow have given him exactly what he needed to scale the poetic heights even further. His most successful ‘silliness’ was proposing on the rebound to a woman half his age: George Yeats is quietly revealed by Foster to have been the greater mind in her sadly-lopsided marriage, and an incalculably important influence on her husband. She is also extremely sympathetic on top of being smart and witty; on numerous occasions when W. B. asked George to channel the spirits, the message from the other world to her ageing husband amounted to ‘make sure to fuck your wife tonight’.
July 15, 2020
Second volume in a series by Roy Foster. Fine storytelling, loaded with relevant details, just enough smart comments, all topped of with a dose of Irish wit. I needed Yeats background info for an upcoming trip and these books delivered the goods.
December 24, 2021
"Patmore once overheard WBY reminding George to send a second invitation to yet another guest from Ireland: 'We have invited a gunman to come here and are anxious he should make no mistake, or think we do not want him. They are so sensitive, these gunmen.' "
October 14, 2023
A very bad man.
February 24, 2024
His head during this period of his life grew a little heavier.
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September 26, 2008Volume Two of Roy Foster's magisterial study of the great poet covers the last twenty-five years of Yeats's life, from the outbreak of the first World War to his death in 1939. During these years, Yeats witnessed the Easter Rising and the birth of the Irish Free State, was married and had two children, served in the Senate of the Free State, won the Nobel Prize for Literature and gloried in his world renown. It also summarizes his experiments in psychic research (conducted with his wife George) and the utterly bizarre philosphical system he published in 1925 as 'A Vision.' The book shows how Yeats finally overcame the belief that his best poems had been written before his 35th birthday by continuing to grow as a poet until the very end of his life. Foster does a thorough job of reconstructing the life of Yeats from the voluminous record left by the poet, his family and friends. Yeats himself was always conscious of his place in history and so carefully organized the materials of his life to influence posterity's verdict on him. Reading the two volumes is one of the great recent reading experiences for me. Now I'm buried in Yeats's Collected Poems.
September 17, 2025
This is the second volume, so my review of the first basically holds for this one too. This volume has the added advantage of covering Yeats' marriage & the composition of his greatest poems, both of which Foster recount in detail and which are, respectively, really hilarious & very illuminating. Foster wrote an excellent history of Ireland as a whole which artistically treated the Civil War with elision but, as Yeats was a somewhat prominent political figure during the period, this book doubles as a detailed & frequently visceral history of the violent guerilla wars & competing factions. I found this book to be doubly excellent for the attentive care it gives to studying the way Yeats wrote his poems, covering drafts & reconstructing intentions from journals & anecdotal conversations around the time, so this book with all its block quotes and extended discussions almost doubles as a guided tour through Yeats' mature poetic opus. A very good read & probably an excellent guide to anyone looking to understand the poet, his poems, or even the Irish political situation of the time.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews