If we detect in Yeats a disillusionment and frustration, reflecting perhaps some biographical let-downs—like the difficulty starting an Irish national theater or the need to cast off the “coat” of inward wandering that exemplified his early mythic phase—it seems this tone of dejection is a tonic for the poems, giving them an emotional edge, and thus an accessibility. Yeats is struggling, even bitter at times—as a reader, I am a friend to it.
Whereas in Frost there is a comfort to the bones in the regularity and utility of the themes. As a reader, I am amenable to it—but at the same time these themes somehow free up a deep emotionalism that I don’t expect, and find almost overwhelming, perhaps in part because of a surging confidence behind the poems. Both however, can confound—Yeats with language (like Stevens), Frost with concept.
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Susan ParrCorrespondences, incidentals, hypotheticals, visuals. I also hike. Archives
June 2023
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