I was exposed to the poetry of W.B. Yeats first when I was at college, and I loved it. We first read the early lyric poems, and then my professor (a real Yeats scholar) gradually drew us into appreciation of his later more gnarled poetry. I came to love those poems most of all. There are more than a couple of bits embedded in my memory still, after all these years.
But I hadn’t picked up the Collected Poems for a long, long time.
Then my husband, for my Christmas present, offered to tack on a week in Ireland for when we go home to England this summer. I’ve never been there: this will be my first chance to see the west country that I’ve heard about for so long. The first Nora Roberts books I encountered were set in County Clare, and the place has a powerful draw for me. Yeats came from the west country, too, further north — Sligo, and the surrounding area. So this June I’ll get to see those places, and more. Deliciously more.
Naturally, one of the first things I did was rummage around to find the Collected Poems. And I discovered a fascinating thing. I can remember my first reaction to the poetry, and when I look at the poems now, I can feel glimmers of that first reaction. But laid over it — because it is great poetry, and grows greater as you mature into it — is what I bring to those poems now. Way more than that flighty girl in her late teens had to offer. Now the poetry resonates off years of life, and reading, and learning about the world and love, hard truths and mellower ones.
There’s one in particular that I have to share. It’s relatively early — A Cradle Song.
The angels are stooping/Above your bed;/They weary of trooping/With the whimpering dead.
God’s laughing in Heaven/To see you so good;/The Sailing Seven/Are gay with his mood.
I sigh that kiss you,/For I must own/That I shall miss you/When you have grown.
I have pictures of my four grown-up-now children taken when they were babies on my desk, and I can look at those soft, rounded faces and see the adults they’ve become. I love those adults with all my heart, but like the poet, I miss the babies they were, now they’ve grown. When I read Yeats’ poem now, the yearning echoes round and round in my own chamber of memories.
If the world falls apart in the next couple of months (which seems not entirely unlikely, if you spend too much time with CNN and the newspapers) and we never get to Ireland, I have to say my excursion backwards into the poetry of Yeats has been worth it. It makes me think perhaps I should pick up some of the other great books I encountered when I was too inexperienced and unformed to bring much to the reading of them and see what they say to me now.
Anything you’ve re-read recently that has more to it than you thought it did the first time through? How has your experience of life broadened your appreciation of reading in general?
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I always find something new when I approach poetry. I think we apply our lives to it and since we change year after year, one can’t help but take something different away each time. Nor can one help greeting the old feelings they still stir like as you say meeting “old friends.”
I am a huge fan of Edna St. Millay, love Dickinson, Plath and some of Whitman. I like experimentals, so I like ee cummings. And the Harlem poets are pretty darn good too. Funny, as much as I love British Lit, not a huge fan of their poetry. I know, you are clutching your heart
In poetry, I’m pretty much an American girl.
Not much of a poety reader…but to stay on course, I’m going to switch it to the movies. Specifically, Pretty Woman. Loved the movie as a kid. thought I knew what was going on.
Then I didn’t watch it for a few years and when I did, boy did I ever understand and thoroughly enjoy the movie then!
Oh, WAIT! Homer is poetry, isn’t he? He’s not all lyrical and sweet, but I do enjoy him.
Amy and Keri, I don’t think it’s necessarily poetry as such — it’s just experiences (even like Pretty Woman) that we’ve had years ago and then discovered are deepened just because, I guess, I’VE deepened and grown up over the years.
Strange. I guess it caught my attention because it’s not often that I can see myself changing over the years, however logically I know I must have. I know, for example, that I was a different mother with my last two childen (who happened to be very close in age) than I was with my first two. Or so the older two complain, loudly. According to them, about half my rules went out the window with the younger ones. Maybe they’re right! Maybe my rules (and my brain) softened!
I’ve never been a poetry buff. Can quote a few lines, but nothing ever really hit home with me.
But I’ll jump on Keri’s comment (BTW- I just hated Pretty Woman. IMHO, it’s a man’s fantasy movie more than a woman’s. Whore in the bedroom, lady in public). For me, I’ve seen Gone with the Wind a million times (ok – maybe not a million, but you know what I mean). The last time I watched it, I saw so much between Scarlet and Ashely than I had as a teen. I understood Scarlet’s determination that Ashley would come to her…he as much told her that. I think age and life experiences made me view the film through different eyes.
Yes, Cyndi, that’s exactly what I mean! Doesn’t really matter what the object is — poetry, prose, film, whatever — but it’s amazing to realize that we are changing even when we think we’re still the same person we were all along.
At least it’s amazing to me!
Well, I think everyone can do that – how many times did you sing a song as a kid and then listen to it as an adult and think, “That’s what it meant? Yikes!”
But I never miss a moment to talk poetry because I love it! Love to read it, love to write it, love to analyze it. It’s my best teaching tool for vocabulary and comprehension and it doesn’t take too long to read (unless you are reading Eliot’s The Wasteland).
Beppie, I’ve never been big on poetry, but my father was a poet. When he died he left his black notebook that was full of all his poetry, certificates for contests he’d won, etc. He wrote several poems about me and my brothers (especially me being the only girl). Something I look forward to passing on to my daughters one day.
I’ve reread Gone with the Wind several times over the span of years and each level of maturity I achieve adds an added flavor to the story.
Jill, isn’t it nice to know that those years add something more than wrinkles? Makes aging seem worth it –