Yeats' symbolism and my essay

[knottygal]

Can anyone tell me how Yeats draw from mysticism, Irish mythology, Irish politics and Greek mythology to write extraordinary poetry? And which are the poems these elements are clear enough for me to discuss into a 3000 word essay?
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[maryjam]

i'm looking for to which school in poetry does yeats belong to????
:confused:

[chemgirl]

I'm not sure how much this will help as I'm not quite in the field of literature per say. I'm taking a modern poetry class right now and the prof covered Yeats quite well. Basically, from what I understood, Yeats had his heart in many places. The mystical and Irish mythology poems come from his desire to restore Irish heritage and myths. The Song of Wandering Aengus, for example, is supposed to be about a man pursuing the perfect imaginary lover that he fished out of a river as a silver trout and turns into a woman. It kind of represents his lust for Maud Gonne, in a sense. The Lake Isle of Inisfree is supposed to be about comparison/conflict between the country and the city. He desired to be in the simple country (and in his mind he travels there) while in fact he remains in the city. Another one that's fanciful is The Stolen Child. I got from that poem that the child, in the desire to excape the sorrow of living by running away with the faeries, doesn't realize just what warmth he'll be missing from not living a real life. The warmth of the simple things in life that can out-weigh the sorrow we may endure. A lot of his poems actually, in theory, were based on his unrequitted love for Maud Gonne. For example, many of his poems discuss unrequitted love and age that comes from not learning his lesson and that maybe some day she'll see that he immortalized her in his poetry. That, in theory, is where I got most of the Greek based poems came from. Like A Woman Homer Sung or No Second Troy, in a sense, like Helen, Muad was beautiful and in his mind left heart-ache and ruin where she went. She was his Helen. As for politics, well, you've got a lot of poems that are based on the rebellion at the post office(?),like Easter 1916, which mentions key players in the fight (including Maud Gonne's husband) and how he felt about them and their actions. September 1913 discusses how he felt about Ireland becoming so fixated on money and religion (disgusted, bascially). And one of my faves is In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz. They were sisters he knew who grew up from beauties to being involved in the rebellion. One was a social worker fighting for food and housing and the other was actually jailed and later released. It basically describes how he felt their being involved aged them and age has no enemy worse than time. I hope some of this is useful at such a late date. Please keep in mind most of the historical background came from my teacher so you may want to double check.

[Symbolism]

I'd say that even the Symbolism (http://www.surrealart.com) of something can be way more important than the thing itself. Its an interesting concept but very true.