Linda's Literary Home

Tag: poetry

  • Life Sketch of T. S. Eliot

    Image: T. S. Eliot - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw09883/TS-Eliot - National Portrait Gallery, London
    Image: T. S. Eliot – National Portrait Gallery, London

    Life Sketch of T. S. Eliot and Poem Commentaries

    T. S. Eliot remains one of the twentieth century’s most influential poets and critics. Born in the USA, he later became a British citizen, and  he influenced modernist literature through his poetic innovations, cultural critiques, and dedication to forms.

    Early Life and Education

    Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on September 26, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prosperous and intellectually active family [1]. His father, Henry Ware Eliot, was a successful businessman, and his mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot, was a teacher and poet.

    Early in life Eliot was physically frail and exhibited introspective leanings. A hernia limited his childhood mobility; thus he was motivated to dive deeply into literature [2]. Early on, he developed a strong affection for classic and French literature, especially Dante and Baudelaire.

    Eliot attended Smith Academy in St. Louis and later Milton Academy in Massachusetts. At Harvard University, he majored in philosophy and literature, [3] studying under major literary figures including Irving Babbitt and George Santayana. He earned his B.A. and M.A. at Harvard.

    As Eliot’s interest in philosophy deepened, he began to study Sanskrit and Eastern philosophy; these studies helped to provide the spiritual atmosphere  around his poetry. He also became acquainted with the works of F. H. Bradley, whose ideas on metaphysics impressed him strongly.

    In 1910, Eliot traveled to Paris to study at the Sorbonne under Henri Bergson and others. He returned to Harvard for doctoral work but left before completing his dissertation on Bradley. His intellectual journey then led him to travel to England, where he settled permanently.

    Eliot’s European education and philosophical bent became the foundation upon which he built his unique style and achievement [4]. His understanding of American pragmatism and European modernism afforded him the ability to compose a type of poetry that was intellectually rigorous, culturally resonant, and spiritually honest.

    Accomplishments and Awards

    T. S. Eliot became a British citizen in 1927 and was awarded the Order of Merit by King George VI in 1948 [5]. That same year, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.  He was also awarded the Dante Prize from the Dante Society of America and received honorary doctorates from prestigious universities, including Oxford, Harvard, and the University of London [6].

    Eliot’s powerful impact on literature and culture has continued to extend beyond prestigious awards. As an editor at Faber & Faber, he encouraged the careers of numerous writers, including W. H. Auden and Ted Hughes [7].

    Eliot’s achievement in the field of drama is still recognized today. His plays, including Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party, have earned praise from critics as well as popular success, broadening his influence into theatrical literature.

    Publications

    Eliot’s first major poem, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” was published in 1915; the subject and style of that poem began to point to a new direction in modern poetry [8]. The poem’s fragmented, stream-of-consciousness structure and dour ironic tone surprised—even shocked and startled—many readers.

    Published in 1922, his monumental poem, The Waste Land, cemented him as the primary voice of modern disillusionment with the approaching spiritual dryness [9]. Edited with the input from Ezra Pound, the poem mixes myth, earlier literary pieces, and clips from foreign languages in its depiction of the fragmentation of culture.

    In “Ash Wednesday” (1930) and Four Quartets (1943), Eliot’s poetic vision put on display its maturity. These later works took on a spiritual tone, influenced by his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927 [10]. Four Quartets in particular reveals his meditative musings on time, historical progression, and soul redemption.

    In addition to poetry, Eliot became a productive essayist. His work on criticism, The Sacred Wood (1920), introduced and elucidated his literary concept of the “objective correlative,” which continued to influence literary studies for decades [11].

    Eliot also edited The Criterion, a ground-breaking literary journal that became a major source for modernist literature and critical thought between 1922 and 1939. His editorial prowess influenced literary conversations in Europe as well as in the USA.

    Special Interests/Controversies

    Eliot’s spiritual journey, resulting in his 1927 conversion to Anglo-Catholicism [12], shaped his personal life as well as his poetic perspective. He felt that Anglicanism was a stabilizing force amid decay and modern unruliness.  Eliot’s social criticism, especially in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), promoted tradition and Christian values [13].

    An area of controversy [14] involves Eliot’s early poetic depictions of Jewish characters. Passages from “Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar” and other poems have led some scholars to accuse the poet of anti-Semitic sentiment.

    Eliot later defended himself from such accusations, and his other defenders have argued that his work simply reflected the cultural climate of his time rather than any personal bigotry. Nevertheless, that distraction continues in certain academic enclaves, particularly those indoctrinated in political correctness and identity politics.

    Another controversial issue surrounds Eliot’s difficult marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood. Their marriage was scarred by emotional instability and illness and ended with her being institutionalized in Northumberland House [15], where in 1947 she died. Although Eliot never divorced Vivienne, he did later confess that the marriage had been a disaster.

    In 1957, Eliot married Valerie Fletcher, who had been his secretary.  Unlike Eliot’s first marriage, his life with Valerie proved very happy, leading to a quiet contentment for the couple.  After Eliot’s death in 1965, Valerie served as curator of his literary legacy. She edited his works and letters, helping to preserve his literary reputation [16].  

    She approved the adaptation of “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” into the musical “Cats,” which proved a financial success for the Eliot estate as well as all involved in that Broadway project.

    Despite—or maybe even because of—such personal trials and tribulations, Eliot’s work continued to address questions of identity, morality, and spiritual awakening.  While the depth of his intellectual capacity remained somewhat hidden, it seemed to be veiling his personal anguish, and critics have continued to explore that issue.

    Illness and Death

    In later years, Eliot’s health declined as he suffered from emphysema and other health complications [17]. He died in London on January 4, 1965, at the age of seventy-six.  Eliot’s ashes are interred at St. Michael’s Church in East Coker [18], the Somerset village from which his ancestors had emigrated to the USA.

    Legacy

    T. S. Eliot’s influence is still felt in the literary genres of poetry, criticism, and the theater. His commingling of tradition with innovation redirected the orientation of English-language literature.

    By integrating metaphysical speculation with poetic form, Eliot reconstituted modern poetry. His ability to describe cultural decay while at the same time suggest spiritual awakening affords his writings lasting importance.

    His poetry continues to attract interest from scholars, critics, general readers, and other poets. In a century splattered by chaos, Eliot’s voice offered—and continue to offer—a rigorous response to the chaotic leanings of modernity and life in general. Eliot remains an essential figure for study in the area of twentieth-century literary studies.

    Sources

    Most of the sources, which I originally used in print form, are now conveniently offered at Internet Archive.

    [1] Peter Ackroyd. T. S. Eliot: A Life. Simon & Schuster. 1984.
    [2] A. David Moody. Thomas Stearns Eliot: Poet. Cambridge University Press. 1979.
    [3] Lyndall Gordon. T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life. W. W. Norton & Company. 1998.
    [4] Robert Crawford. The Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2015.
    [5]. T. S. Eliot. “Banquet Speech.” NobelPrize.org. Accessed October 30, 2025.
    [6] Christopher Ricks. T. S. Eliot and Prejudice. University of California Press. 1988.
    [7] Faber & Faber. “T. S. Eliot and His Editors.” Faber Archives.
    [8] Richard Ellmann. The Modern Tradition: Backgrounds of Modern Literature. Oxford University Press. 1965.
    [9] Hugh Kenner. The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot. Methuen Publishing. 1959.
    [10] Ronald Schuchard. Eliot’s Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Literature. Oxford University Press. 1999.
    [11] T. S. Eliot. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. Methuen & Co. 1920.
    [12] Ronald Bush. T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style. Oxford University Press. 1983.
    [13] Russell Kirk. Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century. William B. Eerdmans. 2008.
    [14] Anthony Julius. T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form. Cambridge University Press. 1995.
    [15] Carole Seymour-Jones. Painted Shadow: A Life of Vivienne Eliot. London: Constable. 2001.
    [16] Sarah Begley. “The Surprising Story of T.S. Eliot’s Second Wife Valerie.”  Time.  August 17, 2016.
    [17] Bernard Bergonzi. T. S. Eliot. Macmillan Press. 1972.
    [18]  Curators.  “T. S. Eliot.” East Coker Parish Council.  Accessed October 30, 2025.

    Poem Commentaries

    1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
    2. Rhapsody on a Windy Night
    3. Preludes
    4. The Hollow Men
    5. The Waste Land
    Image: T. S. Eliot - Commemorative Stamp - https://www.stampsforever.com/stamps/t-s-eliot - USPS
    Image: T. S. Eliot – Commemorative Stamp – USPS

  • A Suite of Creatures in Five Movements

    327a Image created by Grok inspired by the poem.jpg
    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem

    A Suite of Creatures in Five Movements

    I.  Fairest Creatures

    —owed to Shakespeare Sonnet #1

    They have plowed, sowed, 
    And reaped their fields in peace.
    Upon the riverbanks,
    They cast their eye.
    Yet, they have never prayed 
    For quick release
    From tasks that last 
    Until the last goodbye.
    They went about on wings,
    Helped others rise.
    They raised their food 
    And used their useful tools.
    Their little worries sparked 
    With shouts and cries,
    But then their product proved 
    They knew the rules.

    Bridges, buildings, gardens 
    Grew year by year.
    Their music wafted nightly 
    From their strings.
    Exalted words went 
    Sparkling far and near:
    The king would dance, 
    And then the queen could sing.
    They plowed the fields 
    And many came to see
    That rustic life 
    As robust as a tree.

    II.  The Fisherman

    I used to write poems that left a fish smell on the page.
    You had to scale them to taste them so they left too much of me out
    And made me sound as if I were about to sprout 
    Fins, but that was before I met the man with the net—
    The man whose tackle box opened like Pandora’s.

    He tried to humor me with night crawlers big a fingers,
    Called me his little mermaid, which made me half happy.
    We’d sit by the river, his pole in his hand ready to land a big one.

    Once I asked him to let me hold it but he said
    My hands were too small and being a woman
    I wouldn’t give enough slack to the line.

    Suddenly, he yelled, “I got one!  It’s big!  Grab the net!”
    I grabbed it, handed it to him, 
    Then jumped in a started swimming upstream.

    As I looked back, I saw him
    Pulling his hook out of a big, green, rubber boot.

    I used to write poems that left a fish smell on the page,
    But that was before I met the fisherman who showed me his sole.

    III. Never Poke a Rough Beast from the Past

    Never poke a rough beast from the past:
    Likely, you will find yourself ambling
    Among tombstones in the rain
    Through a ramshackle garden
    From which you fled
    So many years ago.

    Out of that moldy drizzle, you emerged.
    Into healing waves, you progressed.

    From a death-star specter, into the life-breathing spirit, 
    You returned, grateful that the Unsensed Force
    Had directed your return home,
    Where poetry could spray in joy.

    Never poke a rough beast from the past,
    Unless you are willing to be singed
    By the bile spewing through his forked tongue.
    Unleashing his aggressions, he is rabid
    To strangle you with his tangled verbiage,
    To erase you as he covets your triumphs.

    Never poke a rough beast from the past—
    The present will secure your future
    As you walk in Spirit.

    IV.  A Colorful Flowerhorn

    The incarnation began with a bright foot
    Curling her toes in the dark hours—
    She confessed to greater sins
    In the brute waters of the river
    Where she gasped as she 
    Imagined she was drowning
    In the muddy gloom of the dark waters.
    She was without canoe or paddles
    As  a colorful flowerhorn bloomed from her nose;
    She sought myriad breathes
    In the steel blanks of the rose rims.
    The colorful flowerhorn loomed
    Before her bulging eyeballs
    Searching the reaches of a netherworld.
    She would not sense the essence
    Of some monster’s soul.
    Her pink fingers become knives.
    A yellow finch pecks at ears of corn.
    She can no longer feel her hands.
    Her head no longer moves to speak.
    She snores but does not wake up yet
    Until morning blasts sunlight through the window.
    Staggering to the bathroom
    Nearly falling over the colorful flowerhorn
    She squeaks the shower tap
    Starts in relief 
    That she sees water and not blood—
    A quick glance at the mirror, 
    And the colossal flowerhorn blooms again from her nose. 
    She is ready to meet the new day. 

    V.  City Slacker   

    Richmond, Indiana, April 1968

    His preening smothered his brain.
    His high school shelved him
    Into the Air Force 
    Which booted him for acting 
    Like a loon.  He grew up 
    In the north end, married
    A co-ed, country girl way south
    Of the south end—
    Two wrong sides of all the tracks,
    But he did own a set 
    Of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

    The day the town exploded,
    He took his wife for a walk
    To look at the rubble.  Back
    In their tiny apartment,
    He returned to his
    Machinations in lunacy;
    She went on stumbling
    Down the course 
    That would blow up
    Inevitably in divorce.

  • William Butler Yeats’ “Among School Children”

    Image 1: Williams Butler Yeats - Chicago History Museum https://images.chicagohistory.org/search/?searchQuery=william+butler+yeats
    Image: Williams Butler Yeats – Chicago History Museum

    William Butler Yeats’ “Among School Children”

    From 1922–1928, poet William Butler Yeats served in the senate of the newly formed Irish Free State.  In “Among School Children,” the poet creates a speaker who dramatizes an event from the poet/senator’s official duties—visiting a classroom of children at an Irish school. 

    Introduction with Text of “Among School Children”

    While William Butler Yeats is without a doubt a great poet, who delved deeply into truth and tried to understand historical events, he was not always successful in understanding certain principles.  

    He set out on a journey of study that led him to Eastern philosophical and religious thought, but he did not quite understand the Eastern concepts that he attempted to exploit in many of his poems.

    Although not among his works that directly broach the Eastern philosophical concepts, “Among School Children” is one of Yeats’ most anthologized poems.  It features numerous allusions to ancient Greek mythology and philosophy.  Yeats was always a thinker, even if not always a clear thinking one. 

    Among School Children

    I
    I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
    A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
    The children learn to cipher and to sing,
    To study reading-books and history,
    To cut and sew, be neat in everything
    In the best modern way—the children’s eyes
    In momentary wonder stare upon
    A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

    II
    I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
    Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
    Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
    That changed some childish day to tragedy—
    Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
    Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
    Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
    Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

    III
    And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
    I look upon one child or t’other there
    And wonder if she stood so at that age—
    For even daughters of the swan can share
    Something of every paddler’s heritage—
    And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
    And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
    She stands before me as a living child.

    IV
    Her present image floats into the mind—
    Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
    Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
    And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
    And I though never of Ledaean kind
    Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
    Better to smile on all that smile, and show
    There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

    V
    What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
    Honey of generation had betrayed,
    And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
    As recollection or the drug decide,
    Would think her son, did she but see that shape
    With sixty or more winters on its head,
    A compensation for the pang of his birth,
    Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

    VI
    Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
    Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
    Solider Aristotle played the taws
    Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
    World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
    Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
    What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
    Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

    VII
    Both nuns and mothers worship images,
    But those the candles light are not as those
    That animate a mother’s reveries,
    But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
    And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
    That passion, piety or affection knows,
    And that all heavenly glory symbolise—
    O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;

    VIII
    Labour is blossoming or dancing where
    The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
    Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
    Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
    O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
    Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
    O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
    How can we know the dancer from the dance?

    Reading  

    Commentary on “Among School Children”

    William Butler Yeats served from 1922-1928 in the senate of the  newly formed Irish Free State. His speaker in “Among School Children” is dramatizing what was likely an official, mandatory visit to a Catholic school.

    First Stanza:  An Old Man Visiting a School

    I
    I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
    A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
    The children learn to cipher and to sing,
    To study reading-books and history,
    To cut and sew, be neat in everything
    In the best modern way—the children’s eyes
    In momentary wonder stare upon
    A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

    The speaker is visiting a Catholic school and “a kind old nun in a white hood” is escorting him through the “long schoolroom,” explaining the lessons that the pupils are studying.  

    They study math and music; they read and study history.  They receive instruction in sewing, as they learn to be “neat in everything.”  All this is accomplished in the “best modern way.”

    The speaker then notices that the children are staring at him, who is a “sixty-year-old smiling public man.”  Yeats was born is 1865; thus he would be 60 years old in 1925, which means that he is visiting this school in the third year of his service in the senate.  

    As a political man, he, of course, would be smiling, as he meets his public, even if they are only school age children.

    Second Stanza:  The Politics of Perversion

    II
    I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
    Above a sinking fire, a tale that she
    Told of a harsh reproof, or trivial event
    That changed some childish day to tragedy—
    Told, and it seemed that our two natures blent
    Into a sphere from youthful sympathy,
    Or else, to alter Plato’s parable,
    Into the yolk and white of the one shell.

    The speaker has begun his narration in which he refers to himself as a “smiling public man.”  As a political official his public must always see him smiling; thus, he keeps up the façade even as he meets with little children.  He then veers off into a “dream” of a young girl whose copulation with the god Zeus has been considered a rape by some including the smiling man himself in his poem “Leda and the Swan.”

    The speaker paints a drama of the event with the brush of a “body, bent / Above a sinking fire.”  He adds into the mix the young girl telling “a tale” “of harsh reproof.”  Or perhaps it was merely a “trivial event” but still it alters the child’s day from “childish” to “tragedy.” 

    He then implies a coupling by employing the images of “two natures blent” into which the swan’s semen and the girl’s ova blend into a version of “Plato’s parable” of “yolk and white of the one shell.”

    Third Stanza: Rape Musing

    III
    And thinking of that fit of grief or rage
    I look upon one child or t’other there
    And wonder if she stood so at that age—
    For even daughters of the swan can share
    Something of every paddler’s heritage—
    And had that colour upon cheek or hair,
    And thereupon my heart is driven wild:
    She stands before me as a living child.

    The speaker then continues his musing about the rape of Leda by the Zeusian swan.  While continuing to muse about that coupling, he is staring intently at “one child or t’other” as he wonders if this child’s countenance and behavior may resemble that of the young Leda.  And as he thinks of this scenario, the speaker asserts that his “heart is driven wild,” observing this little girl standing in from of him “as a living child.” 

    Fourth Stanza:  A Dream of Indulgence

    IV
    Her present image floats into the mind—
    Did Quattrocento finger fashion it
    Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind
    And took a mess of shadows for its meat?
    And I though never of Ledaean kind
    Had pretty plumage once—enough of that,
    Better to smile on all that smile, and show
    There is a comfortable kind of old scarecrow.

    The speaker then unveils an image of his own qualities, suggesting that they might change the little girl if she were impregnated with his spawn.  He wonders how stately and beautiful such a creature would be if resulting from a grandiose Irish senator and  little girl attending this Catholic school. 

    On the other hand, all these intrusive images might be resulting from nothing more than “a mess of shadows,” as he speculates.  Then the speaker seems to be wrenched out of his dream as he claims he was “never of Ledaean kind,” though he once went about as a very handsome man indeed, with “pretty plumage”—akin to the Zeusian swan, no doubt!  

    But then “enough of that”—he must snap back into senator, public man persona, smile and show that he is still a “smiling public man” who resembles more a “comfortable kind of old scarecrow” than the dramatic features of the Ledaean scenario, including a Zeusian swan with fine feathers. 

    Fifth Stanza:  Uncertain Future of Each Child

    V
    What youthful mother, a shape upon her lap
    Honey of generation had betrayed,
    And that must sleep, shriek, struggle to escape
    As recollection or the drug decide,
    Would think her son, did she but see that shape
    With sixty or more winters on its head,
    A compensation for the pang of his birth,
    Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?

    The speaker then instead of remaining that comfortable old scarecrow now continues to envision the result of copulation.  He now imagines a “youthful mother” holding a baby. 

    He then wonders—through the gestation period and the difficulty of giving birth and then the reality of the child right there on her lap—if the young mother could possibly think of that child after it has lived for sixty or so years as a worthwhile accomplishment, that is, would the “pang of his birth” be worth it.  After all, his future will always remain an “uncertainty.”

    The speaker now is ruminating on his own uncertainty, as he has further delved dreamlike into the issue with these little girls—an issue that has inexplicably resulted in images of himself.

    Sixth Stanza:  The Prospect of Scaring a Bird

    VI
    Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
    Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
    Solider Aristotle played the taws
    Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
    World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
    Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
    What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
    Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.

    Again the speaker inserts himself into the narrative, “old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird”—the scarecrow image again.  He seems to be railing against his own aging and appearance.  But he nevertheless cannot leave the notion that his own hidden nature has imposed unexpected, disturbing dreams including these innocent little girls. 

    Thus the disgruntled speaker then enlists “Plato” again to insert suggestive words that refer to his libido, for example, “nature but a spume,” and Aristotle playing the taws “upon the bottom of a king,” along with “golden-thighed Pythagoras,” and “fingered upon a fiddle-sick.”  These terms have invaded the senator’s state of mind, rendering him contemplative of the nature of hidden drives that spring up unbidden in unlikely places and events.

    Seventh Stanza:  Images and Worship

    VII
    Both nuns and mothers worship images,
    But those the candles light are not as those
    That animate a mother’s reveries,
    But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
    And yet they too break hearts—O Presences
    That passion, piety or affection knows,
    And that all heavenly glory symbolise—
    O self-born mockers of man’s enterprise;

    The speaker then draws a contrast between what a nun worships and what an ordinary mother worships.  They both “worship images,” but those images are not the same.  The nun worships images that are hard, harsh, and tinged with craven-spelled beings that break hearts.

    Mothers, on the other hand, worship “Presences,” which inculcate passion along with piety and affection that dulls human awareness to the point that those who mock humankind are merely “self-born.” 

    The wisdom of the ages cannot penetrate a small school where little girls can become targets for aged men who cannot seem to control their hidden urges with which they are born and against which those mothers have no power to struggle.

    Eighth Stanza:  The Nature of Unity

    VIII
    Labour is blossoming or dancing where
    The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
    Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
    Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
    O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
    Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
    O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
    How can we know the dancer from the dance?

    The eighth and final stanza of this poem does not rest comfortably with the first seven.  It could, in fact, stand alone as its own full throated poem.  It offers a melding of body and soul along with the yogic idea of the unity of knower-knowing-known.  

    The speaker is offering the notions that the soul need not require the body to suffer for it, that beauty need not come from despair, and that the acquisition of knowledge need not require burning the “midnight oil.”  

    He, thus, is implying that unity of creation is exemplified in the “chestnut tree” which features roots, leaves, blossoms, and boles, and it, therefore, remains impossible to know which part that “great rooted blossomer” actually is. 

    Also, when a dancer is dancing and swaying to music, and an observer looks with delight upon that dance, the rhetorical question in the final line, paradoxically asks, “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”  The obvious answer, of course, forces itself upon the mind that they are, in fact, united—they are the same entity as one cannot know one from the other.

    Uniting the Final Stanza

    While the final stanza seems to separate itself from the rest of this poem, the uniting element is that all thoughts and all events ultimately proceed out of the mind of one Creative Force.  

    The speaker has been visited dreamlike by mythological characters and events that he would likely never have deliberately thought to contemplate, especially as he is performing a civic duty in a public place.   Thus the question: are the speaker and his thoughts the same or are they separate entities?  

    If they are separate then the speaker may be filled with guilt because of his thoughts about the “living” child who stood before him, causing his heart to race.  One the other hand, if it is all of one fabric and all is related, his thoughts come as naturally as a dancer dancing or as a tree being the sum of its parts.

    Thus readers could take away from the poem the notion that the final stanza works to place in perspective the speaker’s possible self-judgment. He can accept his thoughts as naturally occurring.  Or he can self-flagellate and likely disrupt his own ability to continue doing the work he must do.

  • Vegetable Man

    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem
    Image created by Grok inspired by the poem

    Vegetable Man

    for Ron

    —owed to the vegetable man poster that hung
    on our kitchen wall in Brookville

    Carrots take root in my soil
    Sweet potato eyes in my mouth

    You stalk me
    I run like a squashed tomato

    Asparagus and celery
    Cucumber,  cheese, and liquor

    You run through my lettuce
    Like wine vinegar

    Or there at your table
    Like an open face sandwich

    You are about to devour

    My vegetable man
    I’m in a stew
    About you

  • Edgar Lee Masters’ “William and Emily”

    Image: Edgar Lee Masters https://factfile.org/10-facts-about-edgar-lee-masters#google_vignette
    Image: Edgar Lee Masters – Fact File

    Edgar Lee Masters’ “William and Emily”

    The speaker’s epitaph is titled, “William and Emily,” with no details offered about the pair.  But the gravity of the message is unique and interestingly appropriate.

    Introduction and Text of “William and Emily”

    In Edgar Lee Masters’ “William and Emily” from his American classic Spoon River Anthology, the speaker makes a profound statement about the cessation of passion in a marriage.  It is quite likely that he does so unwittingly.

    William and Emily

    There is something about Death
    Like love itself!
    If with some one with whom you have known passion,
    And the glow of youthful love,
    You also, after years of life
    Together, feel the sinking of the fire,
    And thus fade away together,
    Gradually, faintly, delicately,
    As it were in each other’s arms,
    Passing from the familiar room—
    That is a power of unison between souls
    Like love itself!

    Commentary on “William and Emily”

    The speaker’s epitaph is titled “William and Emily”  with no details offered about the pair.  But the gravity of the message is unique and interestingly appropriate.

    First Movement:  Death and Love

    There is something about Death
    Like love itself!

    The speaker begins with an intriguing proposition, vaguely offering, “there is something about Death.”  Don’t we all know that?  We dread it, we crave it, we mostly wonder about it, but yes, dude, there is definitely something about “Death.”  What the reader is not expecting is that someone would assert that death is “like love itself.”  

    Readers have come to expect all sorts of nonsense from the residents, or might one say, inmates of the Spoon River cemetery. So when one of them asserts that death and love have something in common, readers might not blink an eye, as they curiously wait to find out what this dude thinks death and love have in common.

    Second Movement:  Reason Is an “If”

    If with some one with whom you have known passion,
    And the glow of youthful love,
    You also, after years of life
    Together, feel the sinking of the fire,
    And thus fade away together,

    The speaker then offers his reason for making such a statement that love and death have something in common.   The curious speaker begins with an “if” clause—if you have known someone with “passion” and “the glow of youthful love,” but you start losing that fiery passion of youth.

    Third Movement:  A Fiery Thought

    Gradually, faintly, delicately,
    As it were in each other’s arms,
    Passing from the familiar room—
    That is a power of unison between souls
    Like love itself!

    The speaker then breaks the fiery thought.  This slow loss, “Gradually, faintly, delicately” builds up a drama that might have easily been glossed over.  It is a cliché that sexual passion fades with the age of the paramours, but if it is lost slowly, the loss takes on a different context. 

    The cessation of violent sexual passion between two individuals is scheduled by nature to occur.  That cessation allows room for the spiritual bond between them to flower.  After all, sexual passion has only one true purpose—to create other human beings. 

    Once the physical ability to give birth has passed, there is no longer a need for sexual passion, even though, as many erroneously believe otherwise, the ability to be sexually aroused does not subside, unless, of course, there are health issues. 

    Perfectly healthy octogenarians are as capable of basking in the “glow of youthful love” as they were in their twenties, thirties, etc,—but should they?  What do they lose if they do?  

    Fourth Movement:  Soul Unity

    That is a power of unison between souls
    Like love itself!

    They lose “the power of unison between souls”—a man who continues to pound his wife as a sex object past the age of the ability to conceive and spawn offspring can hardly be considered a soul-living creature.   

    The main purpose of sexual coupling long past, all that is left is that “shudder in the loins” that speaks only one word, “selfishness.”  Or perhaps two words, “selfish ignorance.”   It is the “power of the unison between souls” that speaks to the union with “love itself.”

    So what is there about “Death” that is like “love itself”? God is love—pure love:  not sex, not physical passion that leads to procreation, which is only a tiny aspect of God.  As the human being grows older, s/he becomes more aware of the necessity of knowing God. 

    After procreating, the human body/mind has only one true, dual-pronged purpose:  to pursue and find itself as a soul connected it to the OverSoul, or God.  After the human being leaves the body/mind at “Death,” it craves only the company of its Creator.   A little preparation beforehand is always advisable on this mud ball of planet Earth.

  • Computer Colleagues: Two Views

    Image created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem
    Image created by ChatGPT inspired by the poem

    Computer Colleagues: Two Views

    I.  Those Who Protest Too Much

    “Perhaps the time has already come . . . when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of mechanical skill.”   —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” 1837

    You have mistaken the hands for the heart,
    The craft for the art,
    The brain for the mind,
    The plane for the destination.

    The scholar schooled on Man Thinking must ask:

    When the fountain replaced the quill,
    Did the masters tout it as the solution
    To all pedagogical problems?  a fount of creativity?

    When the ball point edged out the fountain,
    Did they once again shout “panacea”? 
    Ideas become more liquid?

    When typewriters lined up in classrooms,
    Did English professors march their students in to improve
    The essay?  keys take on mind power?

    All are fragile, who would teach and learn.
    But our students know the difference
    Between a tool and a work.

    They come to us to search, if not seek, their souls.
    If we demand that Man Thinking is Man Computing
    We impede their ability to search and seek.

    II. Those Who Fear Big Brother

    “Let the scholar not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom.”   —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” 1837

    You finger the edge of the new page
    But refuse to read it:
    Maybe you can’t control the syntax,
    Maybe you’ll have to ask someone to help you—
    Someone who is not as good as you are,
    Some morale-less underling.

    You do fine with your pen and ink—
    You do write type, though, if the machine
    Does not plug into the wall.

    You suspect that invisible criminal activity
    Is playing in the network of the system:
    Whiz-kids accessing your bank accounts,
    Administrators processing your thoughts.

    Your students laugh loud at the clever insults
    You spit at the machine,
    But they know the difference between
    A stagecoach and an airplane.

    They’ve read that new page
    And they know . . .

    A slightly different version of this poem appears in my collection Turtle Woman & Other Poems

  • William Butler Yeats’ “The Fisherman”

    William Butler Yeats’ “The Fisherman”

    The speaker in William Butler Yeats’ “The Fisherman” is dramatically promoting a style of poetry that will become and remain meaningful to and beloved by the common folk.

    Introduction with Text of “The Fisherman”

    William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Fisherman” appears in the poet’s The Wild Swans at Coole, which was brought out in 1919. The poet’s collection features many of his most widely anthologized poems.

    In “The Fisherman,” Yeats has created a speaker who is voicing a call for a genuine school of art for the common folk, an art that dramatizes the beauty and truth inherent in all great art. 

    The speaker is also decrying the cultural suicide being perpetrated by charlatans in art as well as their cohorts who are power-hungry politicians.  He thus reveals contempt for fakes and frauds, while promoting an ideal that he strongly believes should be steering art and the cultural life of the nation.

    Every nation throughout history has suffered from these same issues, as toppling governments and bloody wars testify.  The poets have often spoken up, calling out names and insisting on reforms.  

    Despite the fact that poetry’s first function arises from personal experience, political controversy often intrudes into the realm of the personal and that is when poets are compelled to use their platform for activism.

    Care must be taken, however, that the poet not become a brazen tool for propaganda. As an accomplished world poet and former Irish senator [1], Yeats possessed the acumen to broach issues of art, poetry, culture, and politics.

    The former politician and literary Nobel Laureate [2] boasts numerous works that address culture and politics: “The Fisherman” remains one of the most colorful and culturally significant poems of the era.

    The Fisherman

    Although I can see him still,
    The freckled man who goes
    To a grey place on a hill
    In grey Connemara clothes
    At dawn to cast his flies,
    It’s long since I began
    To call up to the eyes
    This wise and simple man.
    All day I’d looked in the face
    What I had hoped ’twould be
    To write for my own race  
    And the reality;  
    The living men that I hate,
    The dead man that I loved,
    The craven man in his seat,
    The insolent unreproved,
    And no knave brought to book  
    Who has won a drunken cheer,  
    The witty man and his joke
    Aimed at the commonest ear,
    The clever man who cries
    The catch-cries of the clown,
    The beating down of the wise
    And great Art beaten down.

    Maybe a twelvemonth since
    Suddenly I began,  
    In scorn of this audience,  
    Imagining a man
    And his sun-freckled face,  
    And grey Connemara cloth,
    Climbing up to a place  
    Where stone is dark under froth,
    And the down turn of his wrist
    When the flies drop in the stream:
    A man who does not exist,
    A man who is but a dream;
    And cried, “Before I am old
    I shall have written him one
    Poem maybe as cold
    And passionate as the dawn.”

    Reading of “The Fisherman”

    Commentary on “The Fisherman”

    The speaker in William Butler Yeats’ poem is heralding a style of poetry that will be beloved by the common folk.  He makes his contempt for charlatans known. He encourages the ideals that he believes must guide culture and art.  Yeats was a promoter of the style of art that he thought was closest to the hearts and minds of the Irish.

    First Movement:  Recalling an Admired Man

    Although I can see him still,
    The freckled man who goes
    To a grey place on a hill
    In grey Connemara clothes
    At dawn to cast his flies,
    It’s long since I began
    To call up to the eyes
    This wise and simple man.

    The speaker appears to be remembering a special man whom he has respected: “[t]he freckled man” wearing “Connemara clothes.”  This man has been in the habit of fishing at a “gray place on a hill.”  

    The speaker implies that in his mind’s eye, he can still perceive the man. And it may also be that the speaker literally meets the man occasionally in the village. However,  the speaker has not as of late mused upon the man.

    The speaker admires the man’s simple ways.  He assumes that the man is “wise and simple.”  The speaker then continues to cogitate upon those very same qualities as he continues his message.

    The speaker entertains a deep desire to praise the virtues of simplicity and wisdom.  He has observed those qualities in the folks who are doing ordinary, simple everyday tasks.

    Second Movement:  Researching History

    All day I’d looked in the face
    What I had hoped ’twould be
    To write for my own race  
    And the reality;  
    The living men that I hate,
    The dead man that I loved,
    The craven man in his seat,
    The insolent unreproved,

    The speaker has determined that he will make a plan to write for his own people, including the real experiences they all undergo.  With the plan in mind, he has begun to research the history of his nation and its people.  The speaker asserts that he hopes to reveal the reality of the lived experience of his fellow citizens. 

     Such a reality should well acquit itself and at the same time demonstrate and dramatize the exact truths that future generations will be likely to undergo.The speaker offers a catalogue of qualities that the men who make up the current political landscape have put on display.  

    Some of those men will be the recipients of his ire.  He brazenly states that there are living men whom he hates.  He then contrasts that negative emotion with its opposite by emphasizing that there is as well the “dead man that [he] loved.” 

    The speaker continues in his enflamed hatred by asserting that the “craven” exist while the “insolent” remain unrestricted in their perfidy. The speaker believes that by contrasting good and evil, he can demonstrate the efficacy of the arrival of a steady virtue upon which to build a better art and poetry that can represent Irish culture more faithfully and honestly.

    Third Movement:  The Guilty Avoiding Justice

    And no knave brought to book  
    Who has won a drunken cheer,  
    The witty man and his joke
    Aimed at the commonest ear,
    The clever man who cries
    The catch-cries of the clown,
    The beating down of the wise
    And great Art beaten down.

    The speaker continues referring to the rogues and knaves, who have thus far evaded justice though guilty. The speaker loathes those frauds who have “won a drunken cheer,” even as they have remained undeserving of celebrity and honor.

    The speaker makes it clear that there is a sector of despicable characters who damage, cheapen, and pile shame on the culture.   The speaker accuses such unscrupulous scoundrels of attempting to destroy the art of the nation. 

    They, in effect, denigrate “the wise” as they dismantle the “great Art” that they have inherited.  The speaker grieves that these killers of culture have succeeded in their perfidy. Thus, he is calling attention to their misdeeds. He is proposing a change in focus in order to improve values.  He is not suggesting censorship of the charlatans.

    Fourth Movement:  Cultural Assassins

    Maybe a twelvemonth since
    Suddenly I began,  
    In scorn of this audience,  
    Imagining a man
    And his sun-freckled face,  
    And grey Connemara cloth,
    Climbing up to a place  
    Where stone is dark under froth,

    The speaker then reports that for a while he has been incubating the idea of creating an uncomplicated, “sun-freckled face”—the man in “Connemara cloth.”   For his effort, he has thus far received only “scorn” from the ilk of those culture killers and unscrupulous reprobates.

    Nevertheless, the speaker has been pressing on, striving to envision a simple fisherman, who “climb[s] up to a place / Where stone is dark with froth,” a natural place that continues to be pristine and still remains alluring.

    The speaker is crafting a symbolic being whom he can describe and on whom he can bestow the qualities that he deems must become and remain an important part of the natural art, belonging to the people of his environs.

    Fifth Movement:  The Importance of Simplicity

    And the down turn of his wrist
    When the flies drop in the stream:
    A man who does not exist,
    A man who is but a dream;
    And cried, “Before I am old
    I shall have written him one
    Poem maybe as cold
    And passionate as the dawn.”

    The speaker visualizes the fisherman’s wrist movement as the man casts his line into the water. He admits that this man does not yet exist, because  he is still “but a dream.”  The speaker’s keen sensibility is strong enough to bring to life such a simple, rustic character.  He is urged then to take all pains to bring such a character to life.

    Thus, while the poet is still young enough to use his God-given imagination, he vows to take on the task of writing this fisherman into existence and to compose for the man a poem “as cold / And passionate as the dawn.”  

    The speaker continues to muse on simplicity.  He passionately desires to create a new ideal that will produce meaningful, original, dramatic poetry.

    He insists that that new poetry must be able to speak with genuine originality and that it thus should become a harbinger of the beginning of a new era in art of poetry. 

    The speaker hopes to accomplish all of this despite the wrong-headedness and power-grabbing of too many of the political phonies—and despite the fraudulent deceivers whose selfishness is spreading the destruction of their own culture.

    Sources

    [1]  Editors. “William Butler Yeats.” Poetry Foundation.  Accessed October 3, 2023.

    [2]  Daniel Mulhall. “W.B. Yeats and the Ireland of his time.” Embassy of Ireland.  Accessed October 3, 2023.

  • William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”

    William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”

    William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” remains one of the most widely misunderstood poems of the 20th century. Many scholars and critics have failed to criticize the exaggeration in the first stanza and the absurd metaphor in the second stanza, which render a potentially fine poem a critical failure.

    Introduction with Text of “The Second Coming”

    Poems, in order to communicate, must be as logical as the purpose and content require. For example, if the poet wishes to comment on or criticize an issue, he must adhere to physical facts in his poetic drama. If the poet wishes to emote, equivocate, or demonstrate the chaotic nature of his cosmic thinking, he may legitimately do so without much seeming sense.

    For example, Robert Bly’s lines—”Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand / Reaches out and pulls him in” / / “The pond was lonely, or needed / Calcium, bones would do,”—are ludicrous [1] on every level.   Even if one explicates the speaker’s personifying the pond, the lines remain absurd, at least in part because if a person needs calcium, grabbing the bones of another human being will not take care of that deficiency. 

    The absurdity of a lake needing “calcium” should be abundantly clear on its face.  Nevertheless, the image of the lake grabbing a man may ultimately be accepted as the funny nonsense that it is.   William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” cannot be dismissed so easily; while the Yeats poem does not depict the universe as totally chaotic, it does bemoan that fact that events seem to be leading society to armageddon.

    The absurdity surrounding the metaphor of the “rough beast” in the Yeats poem renders the musing on world events without practical substance.

    The Second Coming

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
    Are full of passionate intensity. 

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
    The darkness drops again; but now I know   
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 


    Commentary on “The Second Coming”

    William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” remains one of the most widely anthologized poems in world literature.  Yet its hyperbole in the first stanza and ludicrous “rough beast” metaphor in the second stanza result in a blur of unworkable speculation.

    First Stanza: Sorrowful over Chaos

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
    Are full of passionate intensity. 

    The speaker is sorrowing over the chaos of world events that have left in their wake many dead people.  Clashes of groups of ideologues have wreaked havoc, and much blood shed has smeared the tranquil lives of innocent people who wish to live quiet, productive lives. 

    The speaker likens the seemingly out of control situation of society to a falconer losing control of the falcon as he attempts to tame it.   Everyday life has become chaotic as corrupt governments have spurred revolutions.  Lack of respect for leadership has left a vacuum which is filled with force and violence.

    The overstated claim that “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” should have alerted the poet that he needed to rinse out the generic hyperbole in favor of more accuracy on the world stage.  

    Such a blanket, unqualified statement, especially in a poem, lacks the ring of truth:  it simply cannot be true that the “best lack all conviction.”  Surely, some the best still retain some level of conviction, or else improvement could never be expected.  

    It also cannot be true that all the worst are passionate; some of the worst are likely not passionate at all but remain sycophantic, indifferent followers.  Any reader should be wary of such all-inclusive, absolutist statements in both prose and poetry.  

    Anytime a writer subsumes an entirety with the terms “all,” “none,” “everything,” “everyone,” “always,” or “never,” the reader should question the statement for its accuracy.  All too often such terms are signals for stereotypes, which produce the same inaccuracy as groupthink.

    Second Stanza: What Revelation?

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
    The darkness drops again; but now I know   
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

    The idea of “some revelation” leads the speaker to the mythological second coming of Christ.  So he speculates on what a second coming might entail.  However, instead of “Christ,” the speaker conjures the notion that an Egyptian-Sphinx-like character with ill-intent might arrive instead.  

    Therefore, in place of a second coming of godliness and virtue, as is the purpose of the original second coming, the speaker wonders:  what if the actual second coming will be more like an Anti-Christ?  What if all this chaos of bloodshed and disarray has been brought on by the opposite of Christian virtue?

    Postmodern Absurdity and the “Rough Beast”

    The “rough beast” in Yeats’ “The Second Coming” is an aberration of imagination, not a viable symbol for what Yeats’ speaker thought he was achieving in his critique of culture. If, as the postmodernists contend, there is no order [2] in the universe and nothing really makes any sense anyway, then it becomes perfectly fine to write nonsense. 

    Because this poet is a contemporary of modernism but not postmodernism [3], William Butler Yeats’ poetry and poetics do not quite devolve to the level of postmodern angst that blankets everything with the nonsensical.  Yet, his manifesto titled A Vision is, undoubtedly, one of the contributing factors to that line of meretricious ideology. 

    Hazarding a Guess Can Be Hazardous

    The first stanza of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” begins by metaphorically comparing a falconer losing control of the falcon to nations and governments losing control because of the current world disorder, in which “[t]hings fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” 

    Political factions employ these lines against their opposition during the time in which their opposition is in power, as they spew forth praise for their own order that somehow magically appears with their taking the seat of power.

    The poem has been co-opted by the political class so often that Dorian Lynskey, overviewing the poem in his essay, “‘Things fall apart’: the Apocalyptic Appeal of WB Yeats’s The Second Coming,” writes, “There was apparently no geopolitical drama to which it could not be applied” [4].

    The second stanza dramatizes the speaker’s musing about a revelation that has popped into his head, and he likens that revelation to the second coming of Christ; however, this time the coming, he speculates, may be something much different.  

    The speaker does not know what the second coming will herald, but he does not mind hazarding a dramatic guess about the possibility.   Thus, he guesses that the entity of a new “second coming” would likely be something that resembles the Egyptian sphinx; it would not be the return of the Christ with the return of virtue but perhaps its opposite—vice. 

    The speaker concludes his guess with an allusion to the birth of such an entity as he likens the Blessed Virgin Mother to the “rough beast.”   The Blessèd Virgin Mother, as a newfangled, postmodern creature, will be “slouching toward Bethlehem” because that is the location to which the first coming came.  

    The allusion to “Bethlehem” functions solely as a vague juxtaposition to the phrase “second coming” in hopes that the reader will make the connection that the first coming and the second coming may have something in common.  The speaker speculates that at this very moment wherein the speaker is doing his speculation some “rough beast” might be pregnant with the creature of the “second coming.” 

    And as the time arrives for the creature to be born, the rough beast will go “slouching” towards its lair to give birth to this “second coming” creature: “its hour come round at last” refers to the rough beast being in labor. 

    The Flaw of Yeats’ “The Second Coming” 

    The speaker then poses the nonsensical question: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”   In order to make the case that the speaker wishes to make, these last two lines should be restructured in one of two ways: 

    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to give birth? 

     or

    And what rough beast‘s babe, its time come at last,
    Is in transport to Bethlehem to be born?

    An unborn being cannot “slouch” toward a destination.  The pregnant mother of the unborn being can “slouch” toward a destination.   But the speaker is not contemplating the nature of the rough beast’s mother; he is contemplating the nature of the rough beast itself.  

    The speaker does not suggest that the literal Sphinx will travel to Bethlehem. He is merely implying that a Sphinx-like creature might resemble the creature of the second coming.  Once an individual has discounted the return of Jesus the Christ as a literal or even spiritual fact, one might offer personal speculation about just what a second coming would look like. 

    It is doubtful that anyone would argue that the poem is dramatizing a literal birth, rather than a spiritual or metaphorical one.    It is also unreasonable to argue that the speaker of this poem—or Yeats for that matter—thought that the second coming actually referred to the Sphinx.   A ridiculous image develops from the fabrication of the Sphinx moving toward Bethlehem. Yeats was more prudent than that. 

    Exaggerated Importance of Poem

    William Butler Yeats composed a manifesto to display his worldview and poetics titled A Vision, in which he set down certain tenets of his thoughts on poetry, creativity, and world history.   Although seemingly taken quite seriously by some Yeatsian scholars, A Vision is of little value in understanding either meaning in poetry or the meaning of the world, particularly in terms of historical events.  

    An important example of Yeats’ misunderstanding of world cycles is his explanation of the cyclical nature of history, exemplified with what he called “gyres” (pronounced with a hard “g.”)  Two particular points in the Yeatsian explanation demonstrate the fallacy of his thinking:

    1. In his diagram, Yeats set the position of the gyres inaccurately; they should not be intersecting but instead one should rest  one on top of the other:  cycles shrink and enlarge in scope; they do not overlap, as they would have to do if the Yeatsian model were accurate. 

    Image b:  Gyres – Inaccurate Configuration from A Vision p. 68 – 1280

    Image c:  Gyres –  Accurate Configuration

    2.  In the traditional Second Coming, Christ is figured to come again but as an adult, not as in infant as is implied in Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.”

    Of great significance in Yeats’ poem is the “rough beast,” apparently the Anti-Christ, who has not been born yet.  And most problematic is that the rough beast is “slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born.”  The question is, how can such a creature be slouching if it has not yet been born?  There is no indication the speaker wishes to attribute this second coming fiasco to the mother of the rough beast.

    This illogical event is never mentioned by critics who seem to accept the slouching as a possible occurrence.  On this score, it seems critics and scholars have lent the poem an unusually wide and encompassing poetic license.

    The Accurate Meaning of the Second Coming

    Paramahansa Yogananda has explained in depth the original, spiritual meaning of the phrase “the second coming”[5] which does not signify the literal coming again of Jesus the Christ, but the spiritual awakening of each individual soul to its Divine Nature through the Christ Consciousness.  

    Paramahansa Yogananda summarizes his two volume work The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You:

    In titling this work The Second Coming of Christ, I am not referring to a literal return of Jesus to earth . . . 

    A thousand Christs sent to earth would not redeem its people unless they themselves become Christlike by purifying and expanding their individual consciousness to receive therein the second coming of the Christ Consciousness, as was manifested in Jesus . . . 

    Contact with this Consciousness, experienced in the ever new joy of meditation, will be the real second coming of Christ—and it will take place right in the devotee’s own consciousness. (my emphasis added)

    Interestingly, knowledge of the meaning of that phrase “the second coming” as explained by Paramahansa Yogananda renders unnecessary the musings of Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”and most other speculation about the subject. Still, the poem as an artifact of 20th century thinking remains an important object for study. 

  • William Butler Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan”

    Image:  William Butler Yeats https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/06/12/413619716/in-the-rolling-hills-of-galway-spirit-of-w-b-yeats-lives-on  Corbis - NPR
    Image:  William Butler Yeats – Corbis – NPR

    William Butler Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan”

    William Butler Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan” focuses on an ancient Greek myth. Leda, wife of Tyndareus, was impregnated by Zeus disguised as a swan. Yeats’ speaker offers his musing regarding the nature of such an act and how it might have impacted Leda’s mental capacities.

    Introduction and Text from “Leda and the Swan”

    The London news outlet The Telegraph, April 28, 2012 edition, features an article titled, “‘Mythical’ Swan Photo Taken Down After ‘Bestiality’ Fears” [1], in which Hannah Furness reports about an incident involving this ancient myth.

    Derrick Santini’s photograph depicting the mythological coupling of Leda and the god Zeus in his disguise as a swan was on display at The Scream, a gallery owned by Tyrone and Jamie Wood, sons of Ronnie Wood, legendary guitarist for The Rolling Stones.  

    A London police officer caught a glimpse of the photographic art piece and reported his observation; then two of the officer’s uniformed colleagues showed up at The Scream to investigate further.

    Because of the law declaring bestiality an “arrestable offence,” the officers informed the gallery owners that they would have remove the offending piece of art.  The curators quickly complied because the work had already been on display the entire month and was scheduled for removal anyway. 

    Had the officers appeared and made their censorious demands on the opening day the display, the gallery owners would likely have taken their battle over the issue to court. Jamie Wood explained,

    We would of course have fought to keep the piece up otherwise.   If anyone wants to view it, we still have it at the gallery. The purpose of art is to provoke debate and Derrick’s piece has certainly done that.

    This scenario bespeaks a troublesome direction for Western culture—an law officer was unable to recognize a piece of art depicting an ancient Greek myth.  Nevertheless, the clash between art and culture remains an issue for all time periods.

    William Butler Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan” focuses on the ancient Greek myth, wherein the woman, Leda, wife of Tyndareus, was impregnated by the god Zeus in disguise as a swan.  Yeats’ speaker is musing regarding the nature of such an act and how it might have impacted Leda’s mental capacities afterward.

    William Butler Yeats’ refurbishing of the famous copulation scene features a modern day rethinking of the event, but adding to it implications that likely the original myth creators would find amusing at best, disturbing at worst.  

    In fact, the symbolism of the myth continues to offer occasion for interpretation, and individuals will approach the act of interpretation according to their own moral standards as well as their own repository of facts.

    Yeats’ poem “Leda and the Swan” is an innovative sonnet (aka American-innovative sonnet) [2], sporting 15 lines rather than the traditional 14.  In the Shakespeare 154-sonnet sequence, sonnet 99 [3] also contains an extra line, as the first stanza becomes a cinquain replacing the traditional quatrain.

    Leda and the Swan

    A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
    Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
    By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
    He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

    How can those terrified vague fingers push
    The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
    And how can body, laid in that white rush,
    But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

    A shudder in the loins engenders there
    The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
    And Agamemnon dead.
                        Being so caught up,
    So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
    Did she put on his knowledge with his power
    Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

    Reading of “Leda and the Swan” by Siobhan McKena”

    Commentary on “Leda and the Swan”

    William Butler Yeats creates a speaker who is offering an interpretation of the ancient Greek myth, apparently to pose a question on which he has been and would likely continue to cogitate.

    First Stanza:  In the Middle of Things

    A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
    Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
    By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
    He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

    The poem begins in medias res, that is, the coupling is in progress after the sudden descension of the swan that has swooped down and is now engaging with the woman Leda.   

    The wings of the swan continue to flutter, after he has caused the woman to stagger.  He grasps her thighs with his “dark webs,” then grips her by the neck, holding her against his body.  The woman remains helpless, unable to loosen herself from this grip.

    This myth has often been interpreted as a rape, and Yeats’ interpretation certainly provides the violence that could indeed lead to that line of thinking. However, based on the actual mythic narrative, a case might be made that Leda was not actually an unwilling party to this act of coupling.  Later that same day, Leda copulates with her husband. 

    The extraordinary result from those two acts is Leda giving birth to two sets of twins: one set includes Helen and Polydeuces fathered by the swan-Zeus, and the other set of twins is Castor and Clytemnestra fathered by Tyndareus.

    Second Stanza:  Questions

    How can those terrified vague fingers push
    The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
    And how can body, laid in that white rush,
    But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

    The speaker of the Yeats poem speculates that the girl cannot push the swan away from her; she is too weak with only “terrified vague fingers,” and he is full of a “feathered glory,” after all he is a god—he is Zeus.

    Zeus’ ability to loosen Leda’s thighs is absolute; thus, there is no hope that she could do other than to remain resigned to enduring that gigantic avian’s heart beating upon her. All she can do is struggle helplessly as he forces his masculinity into her feminine receptacle through his “white rush.”

    Virtually all rhetorical questions function to answer themselves, and this speaker engages two rhetorical questions that follow that format.  Yet, at the same time, those questions demonstrate that the speaker remains open to other answers.  Fundamentally, this speaker is musing upon these events, as he wonders about certain issues, but in the end, he can offer no final answer to his questions.

    Third Stanza:  Changing the Course of World History

    A shudder in the loins engenders there
    The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
    And Agamemnon dead.
                        Being so caught up,
    So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
    Did she put on his knowledge with his power
    Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

    The swan/Zeus deposits his semen into Leda’s vaginal cavity, and all hell breaks loose.  That spewed-forth froth coupling with Leda’s human ova will result in two children, who will change the course of history, especially Helen of Troy [4], over whom the Trojan War broke out.

    Agamemnon then dies at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra, who was angered by her husband’s sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigenia.  As Agamemnon was preparing to sail into war to retrieve Helen, his fleet encountered difficulty which would be assuaged only by sacrifice of his daughter. 

    Loss of their daughter Iphigenia angered his wife Clytemnestra, so she later kills him. Thus after that climactic “shudder in the loins,” the war flames out which results in the “broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead.”

    The images of the “broken wall” and the “burning roof and tower” imply sexual imagery:  the penetrated female by the male penetrator, as well as the plundering of the city of Troy, by the marauding band of warriors.

    In the final musing of the poem, also fashioned as a rhetorical question, the speaker offers his final speculation. He wonders if while Leda was apparently violated by the intrusion of the god Zeus disguised as a swan, perhaps she was also altered.

    Perhaps, she actually was able to take on a portion of his “knowledge” and a slice of his “power,” even though he remained “indifferent” to her predicament.  Because of the god’s indifference, his swan’s beak just allows the violated woman to “drop.”  Did she “drop” with a thud or a swish?

    The Power of Myth

    Because this poem originates from an interpretation of a Greek mythological narrative, it continues to be open to various interpretations. The decidedly absurd nature of a swan coupling with a human being in conjunction with the scientific fact that conception cannot be accomplished across species clearly indicates that the myth’s dramatic meaning that cannot be taken literally. 

    Then, too, there is the issue that Leda’s and Zeus’s offspring are born from eggs—not merely eggs in the form of human ova, but resembling avian eggs; it is helpful to remember that Zeus coupled with Leda as he masqueraded as an large bird—a swan. 

    In the original Zeus/Leda mythic narrative, the issue of coupling appears to be a seduction and not a rape.   For example, about the nature of Zeus’ engaging women in sex, the ancient rhetorician Isocrates [5] has stated,

    Zeus, lord of all, reveals his power in all else, but deigns to approach beauty in humble guise. For in the likeness of Amphitryon he came to Alcmena, and as a shower of gold he united with Danae, and in the guise of a swan he took refuge in the bosom of Nemesis, and again in this form he espoused Leda; ever with artifice manifestly, and not with violence, does he pursue beauty in women.

    According to the Isocrates interpretation, Zeus seduced woman humbly in his various forms, and the god did so not out of selfish lust but for the sake of pursuing and enjoying the beauty in the women who possessed it.

    Many artistic expressions—see two examples below—focusing on the Zeus/Leda narrative for their subject matter portray Leda holding the swan affectionately, therefore, supporting Isocrates’ interpretation that the act was seduction not rape.  

    However, the Yeats poem is one of the interpretations that forces readers to reinterpret the myth as the rape of Leda by Zeus as a swan.  Even though the Yeatsian speaker offers only a waffling about what he believes about the whole affair, ultimately he does seem to be strongly suggesting that the act was a rape. 

    Cleverly, the Yeatsian speaker also takes the direct emphasis off the issue of rape vs seduction by simply posing the rhetorical question about whether Leda took on some of the Zeusian powers.

    Sources

    [1]  Hannah Furness. “‘Mythical’ Swan Photo Taken Down After ‘Bestiality’ Fears.”  The Telegraph.  April 28, 2012.
    [2]  Linda Sue Grimes.  “Literary Devices: Tools of the Commentarian.” Linda’s Literary Home. February 9, 2026.
    [3]  – – -.  “Shakespeare Sonnet 99: ‘The forward violet thus did I chide’.” Linda’s Literary Home. February 12, 2026.
    [4]  Editors.  “Helen of Troy.”  GreekMythology.com.  Accessed October 1, 2026.
    [5] George Norlin, editor.  “Isocrates: Helen.” Perseus Digital Library.  Accessed October 1, 2026.

    Examples of Art Depicting Affection Not Rape

    Image b:  Leda and the Swan - Italian Ministry of Culture — Leda e il cigno, Bartolomeo Ammannati https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0900286615?utm_source=chatgpt.com
    Image b:  Leda and the Swan – Italian Ministry of Culture — Leda e il cigno, Bartolomeo Ammannati

    Image c:  Leda and the Swan https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/H18.1.html  Theoi Greek Mythology
    Image c:  Leda and the Swan Theoi Greek Mythology

  • Virtual Death

    Original poem appearing in my collection titled "Turtle Woman & Other Poems"
    Image created by Gemini inspired by the poem

    Virtual Death

    You reckon your brain
    Reigns like an ice-god
    Atop your mountainous ego.
    But she sucked you through a straw

    And became addicted
    To your sweet, thick texture.
    Your heartbeat measured her
    For a coffin.  But you refuse

    To view her corpse,
    So she will draw you in.
    Between the satins
    Your bodies will curl up

    In virtual death.
    You will die forever, and she will watch.