W.B. Yeats Poetry Essay -- W.B. Yeats Poet Poem Essays

W.B. Yeats PoetryMany literary critics have observed that over the course of W. B. Yeats poeticalal career, readers can perceive a distinct change in the style of his writing. Most notably, he appears to adopt a far more cynical odor in the poems he generated in the later half of his life than in his earlier pastoral works. This somewhat depressing trend is often attributed to the fact that he is simply becoming more conservative and pessimistic in his declining years, but in truth it represents a far more significant change in his life. Throughout Yeats career, the poet is constantly trying to determine exactly what inspires him early on, in such poems as The Lake Isle of Innisfree and The Wild Swans at Coole, Yeats obviously looks towards nature to bob up his muse, thereby generating idyllic pastoral scenery that is reminiscent of the nature-based poetry of Wordsworth. However, his later works are darkened not by his own perspective, but by the fact that he is no longer cer tain that nature is truly the fountain that he taps for enthusiasm. A number of his later poems, such as Leda and the Swan and The Circus Animals Desertion, employ symbolism and metaphor in order to reflect the authors battle to find his true source. Yeats spends his career traffic with this conflict, and he eventually concludes that while nature itself may have been the source of the general ideas for many of his poems, the works themselves came to life only after he reached into the depths of his knocker and sought the fuel of pure human emotions and experiences. Ultimately, he discovers that the only true inspiration comes from the trivial and mundane influences found in everyday life the purest poetic inspiration is humanity itself.... ...ho came before him. To accomplish this, he had to determine where to find inspiration beyond, and thereby stronger than, nature. He ultimately realizes that he was looking at this inspiration the entire time without actually seeing it. It does indeed lie in the deep hearts core, where he finally discovers the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. uncreated SourcesM.H. Abrams et al, eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th ed. NY Norton, 2000. Pgs. 2092-2120.Secondary SourcesGayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Principles of the Mind Continuity in Yeatss Poetry. MLN, Vol. 83, No. 6, Comparative Literature. (Dec., 1968).David Ward. Yeatss Conflicts With His Audience, 1897-1917. ELH, Vol. 49, No. 1. (Spring, 1982).Virginia Pruitt. Return from Byzantium W.B. Yeats and The Tower. ELH, Vol. 47, No. 1. (Spring, 1980).