Zina, thank you for the lovely dedication. You graced us at our first poetry salon with your intellect, charm and patience. Yesterday, I was delighted that you could join me at our home for our first Bakery Crawl pastry tasting. A woman after my own heart, unconcerned that dessert came before the main dinner. I picked out these lines from "Sailing to Byzantium" :
And thank YOU for the generosity of opening up your house (and porch) to my ramblings and recitations. And the bakery crawl pastries were delightful. So glad to have seen you with the drama mamas.
Thanks so much Zina for the poem and the kind words. I teach my middle school students about the importance of making personal connections to what they read. My connections to Yeats and "Sailing to Byzantium"? Well, I count the Cormac McCarthy novel "No Country for Old Men" and the subsequent Coen brothers movie as personal favorites. Your poetic dedication gives me the incentive to look more carefully at Yeats' poem and see if the connection to the book/movie goes deeper than simply the use of the first line.
As for Yeats, I have a formative school memory from 8th grade in which a substitute teacher shared with us "The Second Coming." This was my first time reading and thinking about a poem for adults, and I was seduced. Decades later, I'm enjoying my effort to rekindle the magic of poetry.
I am glad you appreciated the dedication. I think it this is the aim for this little itty bitty podcast. Really it is part of the Substack newsletter/blog... but The Beauty of Things is more than that. I don't count on getting a huge following. I feel like those things are artificial. I am not as smart and prolific as the great poets we got to see in person today, but I feel like we can form small communities to share beauty, goodness and truth. This is what makes society better, helps us better understand one another, and perhaps we can argue our different positions with eloquence and compassion. Yes, I chose the title of the podcast very carefully... in order to remind people of how Yeats influences the popular culture in ways that not-as-well-read folks realize. This is a poem you can easily spend hours, days and years with. It unfolds with time... because essentially this poem is about getting old. It is about legacy. I feel this poem down to the very bones... thinking I may have wasted my life and talent and all these great poets get to have their souls singing forever in the golden art sanctioned by the sages. Byzantium pings my despair more than a little. And yet... it is the invocation of this feeling that is important and it is then our choice to either have this experience wound us or strengthen us.
Zina, let's both refuse to think about wasting talents. In your case and in mine, there's considerable talents we have exercised, and plenty of time to let those and other talents take wing.
And this: The title of Cormac McCarthy's novel _No County for Old Men_ comes from the first line of this poem and the title of Phillip Roth's novel _The Dying Animal_ also comes from the this famous poem --the line mid stanza further down. ~Mary
Also, Zina, I interviewed Dana Gioia and will talk about that conversation soon on my collaborative Substack https://innerlifecollaborative.substack.com that you wrote for -- a lovely essay.
Indeed. One can sit with the language of this poem for such a long time. What I love is that these are not fancy words, but very fervent ones. Yeats describes this wild grief in a transition from the agile, virile man to the one who has to reconcile himself to a life as a gilded bird. However, it always strikes me that this sailing to Byzantium is a privilege for those who are feted artists. Not everyone is worth of the sages' treatment. Not everyone has poems that generations can sing of forever.
Aha… yes, it took me a while to figure this out myself but I know it now. Yeats is feeling old, his virility fading, and his body weakening. Knowing this futility he sees that the way his souls will live on is through his art. The sages will put his soul into edifice. Having just spent the past few days with my aging poetry heroes Dana Gioia and Rhina Espaillat, I really feel this poem keenly. Both had mentioned to me their “porous” memories. Thinking their more sharp writing is behind them. There is an assurance of legacy with these, and other, poets. One that we could only wish to have. Being around them makes me quite aware of my own lack of luster.
Zina, thank you for the lovely dedication. You graced us at our first poetry salon with your intellect, charm and patience. Yesterday, I was delighted that you could join me at our home for our first Bakery Crawl pastry tasting. A woman after my own heart, unconcerned that dessert came before the main dinner. I picked out these lines from "Sailing to Byzantium" :
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
Fondly, Jo-Louise
And thank YOU for the generosity of opening up your house (and porch) to my ramblings and recitations. And the bakery crawl pastries were delightful. So glad to have seen you with the drama mamas.
Thanks so much Zina for the poem and the kind words. I teach my middle school students about the importance of making personal connections to what they read. My connections to Yeats and "Sailing to Byzantium"? Well, I count the Cormac McCarthy novel "No Country for Old Men" and the subsequent Coen brothers movie as personal favorites. Your poetic dedication gives me the incentive to look more carefully at Yeats' poem and see if the connection to the book/movie goes deeper than simply the use of the first line.
As for Yeats, I have a formative school memory from 8th grade in which a substitute teacher shared with us "The Second Coming." This was my first time reading and thinking about a poem for adults, and I was seduced. Decades later, I'm enjoying my effort to rekindle the magic of poetry.
I am glad you appreciated the dedication. I think it this is the aim for this little itty bitty podcast. Really it is part of the Substack newsletter/blog... but The Beauty of Things is more than that. I don't count on getting a huge following. I feel like those things are artificial. I am not as smart and prolific as the great poets we got to see in person today, but I feel like we can form small communities to share beauty, goodness and truth. This is what makes society better, helps us better understand one another, and perhaps we can argue our different positions with eloquence and compassion. Yes, I chose the title of the podcast very carefully... in order to remind people of how Yeats influences the popular culture in ways that not-as-well-read folks realize. This is a poem you can easily spend hours, days and years with. It unfolds with time... because essentially this poem is about getting old. It is about legacy. I feel this poem down to the very bones... thinking I may have wasted my life and talent and all these great poets get to have their souls singing forever in the golden art sanctioned by the sages. Byzantium pings my despair more than a little. And yet... it is the invocation of this feeling that is important and it is then our choice to either have this experience wound us or strengthen us.
Zina, let's both refuse to think about wasting talents. In your case and in mine, there's considerable talents we have exercised, and plenty of time to let those and other talents take wing.
I loved listening to you read this. Thank you!
And this: The title of Cormac McCarthy's novel _No County for Old Men_ comes from the first line of this poem and the title of Phillip Roth's novel _The Dying Animal_ also comes from the this famous poem --the line mid stanza further down. ~Mary
Also, Zina, I interviewed Dana Gioia and will talk about that conversation soon on my collaborative Substack https://innerlifecollaborative.substack.com that you wrote for -- a lovely essay.
“Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal”
What brilliance, honesty and art. And brave intention. There’s no pandering or sympathy sought, the disease of most art.
Indeed. One can sit with the language of this poem for such a long time. What I love is that these are not fancy words, but very fervent ones. Yeats describes this wild grief in a transition from the agile, virile man to the one who has to reconcile himself to a life as a gilded bird. However, it always strikes me that this sailing to Byzantium is a privilege for those who are feted artists. Not everyone is worth of the sages' treatment. Not everyone has poems that generations can sing of forever.
Agreed. The bravery and the passion is so striking in a world of the anodyne and the precious.
I have to confess, I've never known what to make of this poem. There are lines and images I like, but overall I feel like I don't get it.
Aha… yes, it took me a while to figure this out myself but I know it now. Yeats is feeling old, his virility fading, and his body weakening. Knowing this futility he sees that the way his souls will live on is through his art. The sages will put his soul into edifice. Having just spent the past few days with my aging poetry heroes Dana Gioia and Rhina Espaillat, I really feel this poem keenly. Both had mentioned to me their “porous” memories. Thinking their more sharp writing is behind them. There is an assurance of legacy with these, and other, poets. One that we could only wish to have. Being around them makes me quite aware of my own lack of luster.
Ah, how I love this poem and here's another in my heart:
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
—W.B. Yeats (1899)
No wonder William Buttler Yates Won A Nobel Prize For Poetry.
Yes. He was very, very good.