An anthology of poems by W.B. Yeats with a critical introduction by Jeremiah Webster. Reviews: Yeats is often cherry-picked for his swooniest love poems, but Webster reveals the deeper truth that draws us to yearn for Innisfree and wish for the cloths of heaven: in Yeats, we find a powerful and seductive conviction that the human soul exists and is immortal. This belief is by no means a given in modern society, as Webster shows by orchestrating a chord of voices, from contemporary philosophers to Arcade Fire. It is an intimidating consensus, and Yeats becomes, in Webster's telling, a rebellious voice urging the soul to "clap its hands and sing, and louder sing. Meredith McCann / Editor-In-Chief / Dappled Things Jeremiah Webster stands in the great tradition of essayists who use the literary form of the introduction to cast a vision. He knows Yeats, of course. He is comfortable and familiar with Yeats as only a scholar who loves the subject can be. Loves, not simply knows. His introduction functions as a literate, insightful, and glorious appeal that soul (yes, soul!) once again inhabit the world of learning, and it does so with passion and elegance. Gerald Sittser / Professor of Theology / Whitworth University Jeremiah Webster gives W.B. Yeats voice once again and in doing so finds his own prophetic and poetic voice. Webster heralds our civilization's loss of soul and suggests the imaginative spirit of W.B. Yeats as a worthy and effective antidote for such a devastating malady. He speculates that "When a civilization denies this invisible angel, a debasement of culture and the physical body follows. Human life is reduced to behavioral instinct, naturalistic cause and effect, and when the distractions of carnival do not suffice, the gravitational pull of despair takes hold." Such despair needs the soul-food of Yeats and Webster. Fr. Robert Dalgleish / Advent Anglican / Bellevue, Washington
Author
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929). Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. —from Wikipedia
