Unlike most great poets, Yeats went through several phases in his career in which he wrote in quite different styles. What is particularly remarkable is that he was great in all of them. “The Second Coming” is an example of what is called his Modernist poetry — we will discuss in class what that means. It one of the most quoted poems of the twentieth century. Literary works have taken the names Things Fall Apart and Slouching Toward Bethlehem from it. I have heard the poem quoted on the news, in movies, and on TV shows. What about this apocalyptic poem sticks so strongly in people’s mind?
Like “The Second Coming,” “Leda and the Swan” uses mythology to talk about current events at the time. I will explain those current events in class, but for now do not worry about them. Instead, consider why this myth of Zeus’s rape of Leda and what resulted from it might be appropriate to Yeats’s theme. Note that the entire poem leads to a question. What is Yeats really asking here?
Why in “Sailing to Byzantium” does Yeats say he no longer belongs in his own country of Ireland? Why choose Byzantium (another name for Constantinople, which was the old name for Istanbul) as his destination? Why choose a mechanical bird as his final and ideal form?
“The Circus Animals’ Desertion” is one of the more honest autobiographical poems I know. What are the circus animals Yeats describes? What does Yeats mean when he says they have deserted him, and what does he intend to do about it? According to this poem, what is the source of poetry?