William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

You know that feeling when you read something so profound that you can’t get the words out of your head? Well, I had forgotten that my favourite Yeats poem was in this collection (I’ve been seriously tardy about working on reading the Complete Works), but I was immediately reminded why he’s one of my favourite poets. Most of the poems in this collection are quite good (barring “Anashuya and Vijaya” which I thought was rather trite), but “The Stolen Child” is a whole other level show more of brilliance. Yeats uses simple phrases and poignant imagery to paint a tantalizing image of the world which is waiting past the border of Faerie, and I don’t think that any other call by the fey can be more haunting than “Come away O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand,/For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” show less

It took me a while to finish this, largely because I'd read quite a few of the stories in other collections. There's a lot of Crofton Croker here, but there's a lot of other stuff too. It is rather a landmark collection, really, a key volume in the whole Celtic Revival, and it presents a nice variety of tales of various types and from various parts of the country. Included is the epic The Three Wishes, which drives one to have some sympathy for the devil, and the story of a bard's feud with show more the King Of The Cats which is outrageously funny, but the most hair-raising stories are the Christian fables, such as the one about the guy who has persuaded everyone that there's no such thing as a soul who has to beg a child to torture him to death with a small blunt knife to prove otherwise, and the daughters of the king converted by St Patrick who immediately elect to die and go to heaven. There's logic to it, and I'm pretty sure I heard stories like that growing up from teachers and priests and nuns and thoroughly approved of them. For anyone interested in Irish folklore, almost unquestionably the best place to start. show less

While I didn’t enjoy all of the poems in this collection (about 30% of them seemed very contrived, like Yeats was forcing out poems to please his lover), there were far more that began to show his voice as a key proponent of the resurgence in Gaelic culture. It’s hard not to focus specifically on poems like “The Fiddler of Dooney,” which has typically Irish rhythm and imagery, but it’s just so charming that I can’t help it! What I liked so much about this poem in particular was show more that it embodied a sense of insouciance towards expected motifs (here: Christianity, folk music culture, brotherly competition, the bard in society) that is at once irreverent and whimsical without being abjectly disrespectful. How can one not laugh when the fiddler gets let into heaven before the priests? Only in Ireland! show less

It’s been far too long since I’ve read any of Yeats’ poetry, so it’s about time that I got back into it. Some of his collections are hit and miss for me, but In the Seven Woods was a very interesting read since it taps into the height of his interest in Celtic mysticism and nature-based themes. According to some reviewers this was the beginning of the end of his more romantic ideals, but I would argue that while Yeats displays a certain amount of cynicism (read: realism in some show more cases) in about half of the poems the remainder are still filled with images of the wild forest, the green goddess and her animal companions, and the quiet pagan spirituality of Ireland. The tone of the collection really seems to be split between Yeats’ Celtic interests and his commentary about relationships, which is a slightly odd pairing in my eyes, but did make the collection interesting to contemplate as a whole. I should really brush up on his biography (something I almost never do), since I have a sneaking suspicion that this dichotomy must have been a result of changes in his relationship with his wife or family. Though she published the collection, so maybe it’s all just melo-drama (haha). show less