This compelling collection spans Yeats's career: from the poems of his early years, which display his interest in Irish myths and his hopeless passion for Irish patriot Maud Gonne, to the soaring, majestic poems of his old age. Works of precision, economy and sensuous, lyrical beauty, they include "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," "The Wild Swans at Coole," "Byzantium," and "Leda and the Swan."
Poems : W. B. Yeats (Annotated)
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1856-1939) was one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. Born in Dublin, a leader of the Irish Renaissance, he dreamed of creating a new cultural identity for his country. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.
From AudioFile
How appropriate that Nobel winner William Butler Yeats, who helped found the Abbey Theater, should receive this rendering by Abbey Theater actor T.P. McKenna. Appropriate, too, because Yeats's charming, virile and dramatic Irish cadences reveal their true beauty best when read aloud. McKenna does ample justice to this selection of the poet's verses. He has obviously studied them, for his performance communicates all of the subtleties and resonances, the lyricism and humor, the heartbreak and passion with an economy of means, which, in a lesser artist, would soon grow monotonous. The publishers, in calling this "a stirring collection," do not exaggerate. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Of those readily available upon the amazon, this is the one to get most favorably,
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This review is from: W. B. Yeats: Poems (Highbridge Classics) (Audio CD)
I refer here to the Audio Cd of seventy minutes of Mr. Yeats's poetry as read by Mr. T. P. McKenna issued in 2006 from the 1995 Hodder Headline tape. The cover art upon this CD case is the portrait of Mr. Yeats from 1907 by Augustus John, one of the better portraits of the poet before gray.There are a number of recordings of Mr. Yeats's poetry available here upon the amazon, and I find this the most straightforward and listenable issue, if you cannot locate the few readings by Mr. Seamus Heaney for the Poetry Room of Harvard. The several readings of Mr. Yeats within Caroline Kennedy's audiobooks recording of her The Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis are also worth hearing. I discovered quickly that the Naxos recordings The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats (Naxos Audio) and its abridgement The Great Poets W B Yeats to be annoyingly presented with jarring and arguable narration between each poem, and the narration misplaced in the abridgement. Here nevertheless we have the poems, straight up, as read by a wonderful Irish actor of Shakespeare calibre. The other review at present refers to a workmanlike quality of the reader, with one comment that it is boring. I find this untrue, but perhaps I am more accustomed to this style of reading. I found the expression of emotion at all times appropriate, and restrained, but present very expressively. It is not carpet chewing in the style of Naxos's Norton, but dignified reading well done. If anything, I found the pace a bit brisk, but then I believe Mr. Yeats is best sipped slowly, quite slowly, with careful attention to the metric scheme. Seamus Heaney in his recordings recalled Yeats's recordings of his own verse to be like chant, mystic, slow with emphasis on the metric beat. Thusly would I love to hear Yeats read, but this here by Mr. McKenna is so far the best I have heard, save Mr. Heaney's own reading. Mr. McKenna began acting in Dublin in 1954, and has worked extensively upon the boards. He may be a familiar face and voice to you from movies and television. Among other things he has appeared in the Avengers series, in Valmont, in The Scarlet and the Black, in the series Lovejoy and in that wonderful series of Inspector Morse from the books by Colin Dexter. This broad and long experience upon the stage, the big and the small screen certainly establishes Mr. McKenna as an actor of great depth and intelligence. It was a joy for me to hear the profundity of meaning he is able to express in the often obscure, legendary and mystic poetry of Mr. Yeats. To hear him read Politics is an absolute joy; Easter 1916 immediately invites repeated listenings. As I say, I only wish he had read more slowly. This selection of 52 poems leaves little wanting to the scholar of Mr. Yeats, each read as I say as it ought to be read. We hear: Down by the Salley Gardens The MEditation of the Old Fisherman Cuchulain's Fight with the Sea The LAke Isle of Innisfree The Pity of Love When You Are Old The White Birds The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart The Song of the Old Mother The HEart of the Woman HE remembers Forgotten Beauty HE Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven The Fiddler of Dooney In the Seven Woods The Folly of Being Comforted Adam's Curse Red Hanrahan's Song about Ireland The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water O Do NOt Love Too Long Reconciliation The Fascination of What's Difficult The COming of Wisdom with Time At Galway Races All Things Can Tempt Me Brown Penny September 1913 Running to Paradise The MAgi The Wild Swans at Coole An Irish Airman Foresees His Death A Song Her Praise Broken Dreams Two Songs of a Fool Easter 1916 ("a terrible beauty is born") The Second COming ("slouching towards Bethlehem") A Prayer for my Daughter sailing to Byzantium A Prayer for my Son In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz For Anne Gregory (from) vacillation A Prayer for Old Age What Then? Beautiful Lofty Things The Ghost of Roger Casement The Spur The Municipal Galley Revisited Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad? Politics Under Ben Bulben As you can see the sweep is nearly chronological. Remember these readings are Yeats, straight up, no chaser and little pause for breath. Mr. McKenna reads the title, and the poem with great heart, mind and meaning. We can ask for little more. I advise you very much to read Professor Helen Vendler's Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form, and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney's selection for Faber in The Faber Yeats: Poems Selected by Seamus Heaney (Poet to Poet: An Essential Choice of Classic Verse). Although Finneran is the standard complete collection with The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. 1: The Poems, 2nd Edition, I find most enjoyable reading in the wonderful Everyman edition Poems (Everyman's Library classics) which also has excellent and lively commentary. I only wish I could afford the annotated edition at A New Commentary on the Poems of W.B. Yeats. But for now let us listen here, and dream, and remember, and love.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Selection, Competently Done,
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This review is from: W. B. Yeats: Poems (Highbridge Classics) (Audio Cassette)
This is a single cassette in one of those tall boxes that could hold two. The notes are sparse - just a listing of the poems and a capsule bio of Mr. McKenna. The package also claims 80 minutes worth of poetry, but the timings printed on the tape itself for each side (35:29 for side A, 34:04 for B) leave us more than 10 minutes shy of that. I myself have not done the requisite timing, but tend to believe the (spurious?) precision of the tape's numbers.The readings are workmanlike, and the selections are good. All the famous poems are there, and a good deal more. (Offhand, the only other one I would really like included is "Lapis Lazuli".) Unfortunately, the old recording by Siobhan McKenna (related?) and Cyril Cusack is no longer available. It was truly magical. My gripe with this is the fact that you need to keep this oversize box around to hold your tape, and to preserve what scanty documentation there is. A regular cassette package with an included info sheet would have been better.
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