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Poems (Yeats: Collected)
9W.B. Yeats
Yeats is the greatest poet in English of the twentieth century — his collected verse spans Celtic myth, Irish rebellion, occult vision, and old age's fierce lyric clarity.
GBM Assessment (Score: 9/10)
W.B. Yeats, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, is acknowledged as the greatest poet of the twentieth century in the English language. His collected poems encompass an striking range—from the Celtic twilight lyricism of his early work to the fierce, visionary grandeur of late masterpieces such as 'The Second Coming' and 'Sailing to Byzantium.' Few poets have sustained such formal mastery and intellectual depth across so long and varied a career.
Yeats's poetry is inseparable from the turbulent history of Irish independence, especially the Easter Rising of 1916, which he memorialized in verse that transformed political catastrophe into mythic utterance. 'The Second Coming,' with its prophetic vision of historical collapse, has become the most widely quoted poem of the twentieth century, its imagery invoked in times of crisis across cultures and generations.
The Pre-War World, 1906-1912
European civilization at its most confident, with catastrophe approaching. Yeats leads the Irish Revival. Shaw satirizes British society. Chesterton defends orthodoxy. Tagore wins Asia's first Nobel. The Titanic sinks. Cubism and Futurism shatter conventions. Europe's alliance system and arms race have made a general war all but inevitable.
Awards & Adaptations
NOBEL 1923. 'Second Coming' most quoted 20th c. poem.
Recommended Edition
Collected Poems (1933)
