Customer Reviews

W.B. Yeats: Selected Poems (Library Edition)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Obviously, it is the selection and not the poetry itself which merits the low rating. I ordered this text after consulting Books in Print; "Selected Poems" seems reasonable enough. In fact, the poems cover only the first half of Yeats's career, and thus many of his finest works are not represented. Caveat emptor!

This book is for the classic Yeats reader who wants a greatest hits book, without the exhausting detail of the author's every waking moment. Expertly categorized, his great poems are woven into this book, with excellent type and font that is very readable. The cover is also elegantly designed (you can see it online).

Where is Leda and the Swan, Sailing to Byzantium, etc. Early Yeats is OK but somewhat Victorian and self consciously "poetic" in tone. "The Sad Shepard"?

...would be a more accurate/full-disclosure title for this book. Many (most?) of Yeats' best and best-known works are not to be found here. In view of that, a "Second Selected Poems" from the same publisher might be a reasonable expectation--but there doesn't seem to be one. For what it is, though, it's a very nicely produced book. The section titles (I guess they mostly correspond to the original collections from which this "selection" was drawn?) are:

Early Poems I: Ballads and Lyrics
Early Poems II: The Rose
The Wind Among the Reeds
In the Seven Woods
The Old Age of Queen Maeve
Baile and Aillinn
The Green Helmet and Other Poems ("The Green Helmet", however, is not included)
Responsibilities

By my count, the book contains 143 poems, ranging in subject matter all across the board, though many deal with Irish myth and legend ("The Death of Cuchulain"), some are social commentary ("On Hearing That the Students of Our University Have Joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Agitation Against Immoral Literature"), and about half of the "Wind Among the Reeds" poems reflect Yeats' unhappily unrequited infatuation with Maud Gonne ("The Poet Pleads With the Elemental Powers", "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead", etc.). The book does NOT contain "The Second Coming", which is what I was especially looking for.

Addendum: Okay, add half a star to the rating above. I picked up a complete collection of Yeats' poetry ("The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats" edited by Richard Finneran, a nicely put-together and reasonably priced volume), and learned that Yeats kept editing/tinkering with some of his works throughout his life; the Finneran book contains the latest/final versions of the changed poems, while this "Selected Poems" prints the works as they were originally published. For example, of the poems mentioned above, Yeats at some point shortened the title of "On Hearing That the Students...". He also retitled the Cuchulain poem "Cuchulain's Fight With the Sea" and changed a number of lines--neither of which, for my tastes, improved the poem; I like the earlier version better. I don't know how many other poems might be affected that way; but it's given me more reason to hang onto "Selected Poems" even though I now have another, complete, collection.

Get the great recording by Shakespearean actor T. P. McKenna at W. B. Yeats (Poets for Pleasure) or better as reissued in Audio CD format at W.B. Yeats: Poems (Highbridge Classics) instead. It is priced far more favorably at this time one tenth of the cost of this, and it is actually audible in a well enunciated and comprehensible manner.

This recording by William Sutherland, on the other hand is absolutely unlistenable, despite the premium pricing. It seems exactly as if you awoke your old great uncle from his chair by the fire, drowsy with great years and tongue swollen from hock and seltzer, to have him read you unprepared pages from Yeats.

And the worst pages too. Occasionally by the third disk here on the briefer poems he manages to rose himself into conviction like an old fire horse hearing the alarm bell, but quickly fades back again into incomprehensible and swollen mumbles without emotion, nor understanding, merely a droning of sounds, and an amateur sing-song delivery.

And this for the most prolonged of Mr. Yeats's interminable epic lyrics, including reading to us alone the narrators part of who is saying what. This is to weep, to sleep, to turn off as soon as is politely permitted, and to replace with the mighty McKenna's brilliant readings.

Skip this; get McKenna, whom you like I will play all of the night long, repeatedly, and brilliantly. This present three disk set does not invite even one listening, let alone two. It does not inform. In fact, the words are indistinguishable.

Also, mine came without a playlist, nor any brochure at all, and no indication at all whatsoever of what we are listening to when. This is not worth the purchase. Buy instead McKenna for listening, and Poems (Everyman Poetry) and have something left over for further study, for the peat turf for that hearthside fire, for your great uncle to nod and to dream in peace and in warmth.

This small book can help wet your appetite for more of this magnificent poet!! A great little hardcover to carry around. I recommend this for someone just getting acquainted with Yeats or a long-time Yeats lover who wants to own a handy sized collection.

I ordered the book for my wife and was pleased with the promptness of the delivery.

r/