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50 Greatest Books

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

REX MURPHY

Globe and Mail Update

Latest comment posted at 7:44 AM EST 27/08/08

Collected poems are one with works of Beethoven and Michelangelo ...Read the full article

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  1. D Mores from GTA, Canada writes: As a label is to a wine bottle, the cover is to the book shown in the picture. Too bad we can't enlarge the image to see the publisher. I'd love to buy that particular copy!
  2. Paul Vermeersch from Toronto, Canada writes: D Mores,

    It is none other than the Wordsworth Poetry Library edition in paperback from 1994.

    The 1998 edition has the same "label," but features a painting of a cottage instead of the landscape with seaside and mountains.
  3. robert martin from london, Canada writes: bravo Rex Murphy. His comments on Yeats are brilliant. He sums yeats up superbly, "so much in so little". It is not possible to imagine a better way of putting it. And Yeats himself created the ideal notation for the Easter Rising and its aftermath: CHANGED, ALL CHANGED; A TERRIBLE BEAUTY IS BORN...Easter 1916. Yeats captured the history of modern Ireland in eight words. If a bit of hyperbole may be permitted, Second Coming should be regarded as the definitive poem of the 20th century. The poem is crammed with evocative images: a superb title for a book about contemporary Canada would be: "Falcons in search of a falconer". The great Nigeran writer Chinua Achebe, borrowed the title of his finest novel from Second Coming.
  4. Matt MacLeod from Vancouver, Canada writes: Uxoricide is the murder of one's wife. But Agamemnon was murdered by his wife.

    Nice try, Rex :^)
  5. Dave T from midwest, Canada writes: “The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared,” wrote Georges Braque, a notion not remote from the omniscient Yeats with his meticulously crafted verse: the idea cemented within the architecture of the poem. Our reviewer hints at this, and also does well to include clips from some of Yeats’ most famous poems: “ the nightmare that Rides upon the sleep”- a reference to WW1 in 1919, the “Second Coming” with its accompanying geometry of cascading spirals, Leda and the Swan. One might add “Easter 1916,” mindful of W.H. Auden’s memorial to Yeats; “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry,” Auden wrote. Or his poem “What Then?” Nietzche gave us the basic idea "overcome but still remain less." Yeats wrote: “The work is done, grown old he thought...Something to perfection brought.’ But louder sang the ghost, “What then?” As well, one might recall some of the earlier work where the hand of Valery and Mallarme is allegedly evident (even though it is Verlaine I hear more in the voice), and where Yeats went against the grain of what other poets were doing, a point not lost on some Irish literary descendants including Seamus Deane, and Eavan Boland who wrote, “But the wind of every door blew the smell of honey in your face when there was none.” The capacity to stand outside the current of the times without rejecting it: the potentially symbiotic rapport with the symbolists, the supposed late arrival to the modernist’s table, the launching of the poet Rabindranath Tagore onto the western palette. And yet, it is also incumbent on us mere mortals to find some balance to the thing, which might be to say that some of the great poets who followed Yeats: Wallace Stevens, Montale, Neruda, Pessoa, Lorca moved in different directions, indebted or otherwise. It was to Walt Whitman that Lorca wrote his famous book length Ode. Still, there is likely no poet of the 20th century whose work spread further, the words themselves moving like streams against the thirsty declension of the land.
  6. Robin M from Canada writes: There are many versions of Yeat poems published under this title. Can anyone tell me which version this is and where can I buy a copy?
    thanks
  7. Robin M from Canada writes: D Mores from GTA, Canada writes: As a label is to a wine bottle, the cover is to the book shown in the picture. Too bad we can't enlarge the image to see the publisher. I'd love to buy that particular copy!

    D. Mores - 2nd that! Too bad the Globe didn't publish which version this is..
  8. Spurgeon Gillis from Canada writes: Uxoricide? -- look again Rex. And I think Frye referred to Bach, not Mozart.

    A great book deseves a great review, or at least an accurate one.

    Also, a nice edition to this excellent series would be a list of the best translations and editions of each.
  9. leo bloom from radisson, sask, canada, Canada writes: Hey Spurgeon, I thought this WAS a good review. Matt MacLeod has already pointed out the 'uxoricide' error. What did you do, scan-Frye a red herring to flip Bach for Mozart? Come on man...this was a good review...why spend the better part of a weekend and a choo-choo Monday morning looking for another Murphyite mistep? Do you feel better now that you've put Rex in his place?
  10. Jim Roth from Victoria, Canada writes: This is one of the rare occasions when I have to agree with Rex. WBY is the master.

    I am also reminded of listening to Cross Country Checkup and enjoying Rex's weighty pronouncements:

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

    :-)
  11. kevin o'connor from Toronto, Canada writes: Fine column Rex,
    Perhaps the awing subject of Yeats made you to tone down your mostly ridiculous, lord black inspired style. There is more insight here with much simpler vocabulary, and much much less self reverential haughtiness, than in a dozen of your political columns. Keep it up. This is more in spirit with the poetic ideal than the grating blather you often produce.
  12. John Smith from Canada writes: W. B. Yeats one of the important figures in literary arts, absolutely. But can the Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats be proclaimed as one of the most important books? Essentially, a greatest hits collection and to my knowledge the first such collection was released well after his finest work. The IMPACT AND INFLUENCE of Yeats was felt with the release of his many volumes such as Responsibilities, The Wild Swans at Coole, Michael Robartes and the Dancer etc

    To use a pop culture example, it is like saying The Beatles "Red" and "Blue" Greatest Hits collections released in 1973 were their most important albums rather than say the release of She Loves You single, or Revolver and St. Peppers albums.

    This calls into question the theme of the top fifty list. Is it fifty most important writers or fifty most important books. If it is the latter, Rex should of worked a bit harder and made a case for one of original volumes of Yeats.
  13. Green Gene from Federal Bluesville, Canada writes: Why is it when a commenter with the gargantuan vocabulary of a 'Rex Murphy' writes a column they are given carte blanche with your editing team...ie. nobody would dare to question their syntax, sentence structure or semantics. While I don't question the 'Rex's' intelligence, I find he stretches to use terms that are arcane and often non-existent; eg. 'upropitious' is used although the word doesn't exist according to Oxford, among others. Seems that the missing 'n' after the initial vowel would have worked - something a copy editor surely would have picked up on. Love Yeats, have for years. Messr Murphy could use some lessons on economy (of language) from Yeats, Beckett, et al.

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