William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure. Yeats was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre.

Modernism

In 1913, Yeats met the young American poet Ezra Pound. Pound had travelled to London at least partly to meet the older man, whom he considered "the only poet worthy of serious study". From that year until 1916, the two men spent the winters in a cottage in Ashdown Forest with Pound nominally acting as Yeats' secretary. The relationship got off to a rocky start when Pound arranged for the publication in the magazine Poetry of some of Yeats' verse with Pound's own unauthorised alterations. These changes were mostly designed to reflect Pound's distaste for Victorian prosody. However, both men soon found that they had a good deal to learn from each other. In particular, the scholarship on Japanese Noh plays that Pound had obtained from Ernest Fenollosa's widow provided Yeats with a model for the aristocratic drama he intended to write. The first of his plays modelled on Noh was At the Hawk's Well, the first draft of which he dictated to Pound in January 1916.

Related Topics:
1913 - Ezra Pound - 1916 - Ashdown Forest - Poetry - Prosody - Japan - Noh - Ernest Fenollosa

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Yeats is generally conceded to be one of the twentieth century's key English-language poets. Yet, unlike most modernists who experimented with vers libre, Yeats was a master of the traditional verse forms. The impact of modernism on Yeats' work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favour of the more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities, and The Green Helmet.

Related Topics:
English-language - Vers libre

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~