Even though I have known for years that Yeats died in 1939, I never thought of him in an age of radio, but I just discovered him reading "The Fiddler of Dooney" for the BBC in 1935. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" is even more incantatory, to the point where the poet has set his own words almost to music; it's spoken, but it has a tune. I had never heard his voice. Looking for more recordings, I found him in 1936 praising Edith Sitwell, which makes me feel that it doesn't matter if I agree about her poetry specifically, just the fact that he doesn't trash the next generation's poets who smashed the patterns of his old mythologies counts with me. In the continuing absence of the Internet Archive, I could not locate the full text of that radio talk, but I read enough of it to run into the line, "I think profound philosophy must come from terror."
Links
Page Summary
Active Entries
- 1: Cormorant to rock, gulls from the storm
- 2: On the edge and off the avenue
- 3: Afghanistan banana stand
- 4: She was an excellent governess and a most respectable woman
- 5: The dark sleek heads are risen from the water
- 6: And the shrouds hum full of the gale of the grave and the keel goes out to the sea
- 7: In my time on earth, I said too much, but not nearly, not nearly enough
Style Credit
- Style: Classic for Refried Tablet by and
Expand Cut Tags
No cut tags