T.S. Eliot or W.B. Yeats

[mortalterror]

Which do you think is the better poet? I really can't make my mind up between the two. On the one hand we have Prufrock, The Wasteland, Four Quartets, Ash Wednesday, The Hollow Men, and The Journey of the Magi. Against these set Easter, 1916, Leda and the Swan, Sailing to Byzantium, The Second Coming, The Wild Swans at Coole, and An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. Both men wrote plays, though I have not read enough of either to make a thorough comparison. Do you think either can compete with the likes of Wordsworth, Blake, or Shelley? Where would you put them in the canon?

[Maximilianus]

I don't really believe that poets can be compared. I think every poet perceives their piece of life and puts it in verse according to whatever interpretation comes out of their mind and heart, and only for that, I mean for the sake of sharing their perceptions with us, they are equally valuable.

I wouldn't dare such a comparison. I feel grateful for all of their existences, their works and their sharing them with us. They could have well taken their work to the grave, but they didn't, and that's why we have what they devised as part of the world heritage that we now enjoy and discuss. ;) :)

[LitNetIsGreat]

I have read a little of both poets to about the same extent, but not really that deeply to be absolutely sure about them. However on what I have read I think that T. S. Eliot is the most interesting of them and if I were to read more deeply I think he would be the poet I would choose. I have never really taken to Yeats for some reason personally.

As to the canon, certainly looking at modernism, I would place Eliot as absolutely central figure of the movement.

[Niamh]

I personal think Yeats is the better of the two. I also think he is a greater writer that the likes of Wordsworth, but that is my opinion.

[Jozanny]

Which do you think is the better poet?

mortal,

I have no real argument to offer in terms of Yeats as a poet, other than to say I've never really studied Irish literature. I know something about Irish culture before the Anglo encroachment, and the best I can do is shrug. So what. Caucasians had a tribalist mystique too, big deal, but once the English became the once and forever occupying power, I partly tuned out, to both Yeats and Joyce, but of what Yeats I have read before I registered on LN, it just doesn't move me, and would prefer less perfection for some kind of authenticity.

This is not to say Eliot's work doesn't strike a pose, but there is a pathos which I find more compelling--and far too many modernists owe a debt to Eliot, like Allen Tate, who I am coming to admire.

If someone can really offer me a compelling reason that Yeats is worth study beyond the tincture of occupying victimization, maybe one day I'll sit down with a collection, but I am already prejudiced against.

That said, I miss reading my contemporaries too much, and I am going to wind it down here for a while. Robert may have inadvertently recalled me to myself.

[Niamh]

Yeats was also a great romantic. some o his greatest poems, No Second Troy, for example were written for a woman.

[mayneverhave]

Very, very difficult decision, as these two are 1 and 2 in my ranking of favorite poets.

I would ultimately have to choose Eliot. My adoration for Prufrock and particularly The Waste Land outweigh my adoration for Yeats, although in terms of complete bodies of work, I must ultimately choose the Irishman, whose vast oeuvre and great number of good poems outweigh Eliot's small body of work.

Both poets strike me on a very direct level. I remember The Second Coming as the first poem that ever actually floored me when I read it, with the power of those final lines. In fact, the first poem I ever commented on on this forum was in fact The Second Coming.

Then again, The Waste Land, with its summoning up of the disillusioned early 20th century, and that fantastic first stanza. Very tough choice.

Either way, I prefer both to Wordworth, Keats, and Shelley.

[stlukesguild]

I don't really believe that poets can be compared.

Eliot himself would certainly have disagreed:

Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.

Personally, I would find such a choice difficult as I find both poets to be incredibly strong. Jozie... I think you are thinking too much... analyzing too much... with regard to the poet's biography and the historical milieu and ignoring the fact that the poet, Yeats, is not some representative of some English/Irish stereotypes but an individual poet who created some truly marvelous verse... that alone is what makes him worthy of reading. Again... the choice for me would be difficult. I feel both poets have been incredibly influential and both wrote some of the strongest verse of the English language in the modern era... of all time. Throw them up against Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth? My preference may go for the latter poets over Wordsworth and Shelley... but I suspect I'd give Keats the nod... but is this not another instance in which strong arguments can be made for each and every one?

[JBI]

It depends - for instance, you missed half of Yeats' great poems in your summary of him (the obvious ones being Among School Children, A Prayer for My Daughter, and Under Ben Bulben). I've read both poets and length, and realize that there is absolutely no point in comparing them - it doesn't achieve much, they were both the best of their respective generations in English, despite what others really try to say (Stevens, Crane, Frost, etc. don't measure up really, and the only possible rival I can think of from England is Wilfred Owen, who didn't manage to achieve his full capacity). Yeats ultimately is what he termed "The last romantic", whereas Eliot is, I would argue, the archetypal modernist poet (and essentially the model for the rest of them).

Beyond that too, their forms are different. Ultimately, the greatest works of Yeats are the ones written in Ottava Rima at the end of his life (though he wrote a fair number of great works outside the form). Ultimately though, Eliot's power rests in the 5 section section of The Waste Land, with the strong undercurrent of iambs and softened forms; take this for instance:



The time is now propitious, as he guesses, 235
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence; 240
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall 245
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows on final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...

or this:


The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails 270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
Down Greenwich reach 275
Past the Isle of Dogs.
Weialala leia
Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester
Beating oars 280
The stern was formed
A gilded shell
Red and gold
The brisk swell
Rippled both shores 285
Southwest wind
Carried down stream
The peal of bells
White towers
Weialala leia 290
Wallala leialala

'Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.' 295
'My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised "a new start".
I made no comment. What should I resent?'
'On Margate Sands. 300
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.' 305
la la



The first Ironizes the sonnet, the second ironizes lyric poetry in general, a very sort of negative form, in a poem that is highly dependent on form (we can thank Pound for that, of course, though the form is essentially mimicked all throughout Four Quartets, with even more limitation, as the subject of each section corresponds with the same sections of the other poems).

Beyond that too, Eliot's most famous works seem to be the poetry of a 30 year old, dissatisfied with his world. Yeats' on the other hand are that of a grown man - he ultimately was the most profound in age, a rare thing. The only real working in the older genre for Eliot seems to be Four Quartets, but even that doesn't hold the same (though, especially in Burnt Norton, he borrows a great deal from Yeats' amongst school children, as a way of approaching the questions proposed by Yeats).

How then can we compare? By chance, poetry made it to the point that a generation became roughly 30 years, and both poets were working at the height of their generations as a sort of figure. How then do we compare?

[JCamilo]

Wouldn't Eliot also vote for Yeats?
Anyways, I prefer Yeats, but just because I prefer his style of poetry and when I think of moderm poetry in the XX I think about Fernando Pessoa.
But poor Blake,while the original question was about Wordsworth, Shelley and Blake, he was quickly replaced by Keats in the answers :D

[stlukesguild]

Ack! I didn't even notice that it was Blake and not Keats in Mortal's OP! That completely changes everything. Blake trumps them all.:D

[mayneverhave]

That might have been my fault. I had a hunch I had misremembered the three listed as I wrote that post, but no matter.

I, for one, prefer Eliot's "half-deserted streets", and "restless nights in one-night cheap hotels" to anything in Yeats, who seems to be an anachronism in 20th century, but never the less endearing.

[Jozanny]

I, for one, prefer Eliot's "half-deserted streets", and "restless nights in one-night cheap hotels" to anything in Yeats, who seems to be an anachronism in 20th century, but never the less endearing.

I will give you a pass on endearing Never :)

But to also respond to luke: Here are the last two stanzas of "The Cap and Bells"

She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.

They set up a noise like crickets,
A chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.


What chances does this poem take? Next to Eliot it reads like artificial sweetner. Not a bad poem, but far too careful, and authenticity does not have to fall prey to confessional overload--and when he does nuance issues like alcoholicism in the working classes, he is just so cautious that it seems little less than asking for pity in frills and lace.

I sold my Kinsella anthology because the good professor was--never mind--but had I kept it, I concede he had an ear for this--authenticity in those more obscure in the Irish tradition who came before Yeats.

[acdouglas92]

Having read Eliot extensively (but still don't have the faintest idea about some of his poems), I'd have to say he is the best out of the above mentioned. He reached deep inside the human conscience and struggled to understand the lost men, [the hollow men], or perhaps understand why humans can be so indecisive (Prufrock). In this sense I believe he speaks to the vast genre of human morality / philosophy. Though on the whole his poetry usually requires extensive footnotes and sometimes even supplemental texts. Excellent poet, though, in my opinion.

Though, honestly, as stlukesguild said: I don't think poets can really be compared. Poetry is just another vehicle to communicate with the human mind, and you can communicate in any way you'd like. What is pleasing to one crowd might disgust another. Though if I HAD to choose, Eliot would be my pick. Just take poetry with a grain of salt. Enjoy it for what it is.

[JCamilo]

I for once, think not only they can but should be compared. It is not a dire crime. For example, JBI said one was a romantic and other a modernist. How that is not comparing. Comparing is not necessarily a competition.

For example, we can compare Blake capacity to be replaced with Keats :D

[Virgil]

Hard to really say at that level. I believe from pure poetic skill of the language, Yeats is solidly ahead. But Eliot really opens up the form to something that wasn't done before him. His originality of conception goes beyond Yeats for sure. Yeats is working within established forms, but the shear poetry of his lines is breath taking. Eliot's poetic lines can be at times flat or even mundane, but the aesthetics of his work transcends.

I picked Yeats here because you asked who is the better poet.

Now if you had included Wallace Stevens, then I think he would have topped them both. ;)

[JBI]

To answer the second question, I think both of them better poets than both Shelley and Blake, and perhaps more than Keats, though that is more of a debate. Blake, as an overall artist, competes far better, but as a poet, I'm afraid, though fantastic, he can't measure up, but ultimately, such comparison is silly. there are three categories 0, 1, 2. All these poets are 2s, most poets are 0s, and poets like H.D. are 1s. 2s are essentials, one's are interesting additional background, and 0s are essentially rubbish. Comparing two giants is a waste of time.

[stlukesguild]

So by your standard Dante would be a... 10?:D

PS... I would be more than hesitant to place Eliot above Blake... with or without consideration of his contributions in the visual arts.

[stlukesguild]

C'mon Jozie... you know better than to play that game. You put up a good early Yeats against Eliot knowing that such will appear pale... not unlike a good Victorian painting placed against Picasso. What of Yeats at his strongest? What of The Tower, Sailing to Byzantium, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, Lapis Lazuli, or Easter Sunday:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

By the way... I'm not getting your obsession with Yeats as merely another in the line of Irish literature. His real predecessors as as much or far more the great Romantics (especially Blake and Shelley).

[JBI]

So by your standard Dante would be a... 10?:D

he would be a 2, as would Shakespeare. Saying who is the best is not the point, saying who is worth reading more than once is the point. Someone like Eliot doesn't profit from being named better than Yeats - they work together - you can't read, as I have stated, certain moments of Eliot without reading Yeats, as you cannot read Yeats without reading, in many cases, Homer, or Aeschylus, and you can't read Keats without Wordsworth, and the whole Classical tradition at least in a place in your mind, and you can't read Shelley's Adonais without Keats either, just as you can't read the end of Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn without knowing the allusion to Shakespeare's sonnet, which in itself is arguing over a whole bunch of other traces.

There is only one poem, and certain sections are worth reading. Both Yeats and Eliot are fundamental to the English language poetic tradition - why bother saying who is better, not only are they of different styles and time periods, but they also work better together, not against each other.

[Virgil]

he would be a 2, as would Shakespeare. Saying who is the best is not the point, saying who is worth reading more than once is the point. Someone like Eliot doesn't profit from being named better than Yeats - they work together - you can't read, as I have stated, certain moments of Eliot without reading Yeats, as you cannot read Yeats without reading, in many cases, Homer, or Aeschylus, and you can't read Keats without Wordsworth, and the whole Classical tradition at least in a place in your mind, and you can't read Shelley's Adonais without Keats either, just as you can't read the end of Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn without knowing the allusion to Shakespeare's sonnet, which in itself is arguing over a whole bunch of other traces.

There is only one poem, and certain sections are worth reading. Both Yeats and Eliot are fundamental to the English language poetic tradition - why bother saying who is better, not only are they of different styles and time periods, but they also work better together, not against each other.

I quite agree with all you say here JBI. Very well said.

[JCamilo]

C'mom, when I read Keats for the first time, Ode to a grecian urn, years ago, I had no memory of shakespeare sonnets. You can read ,because those 2s are all related but they also are great for the capacity of looking like something new.

I also think it is silly a mathematical ranking, I would argue Blake is fantastic and I prefer him over Yeats, but I prefer Keats over Blake, so I would not be agreeing with anyone, exactly because it is a level of innacurary. We can say they are all better than Elizabeth Barret Browning so she is a 1... But in the end, after many controversies in soccer forums, I say those who can play when Pele is tired and have a Pele day. In literature it would be, those who can have their Dante's day. All of those can of course.

[mortalterror]

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.


I'm glad you brought Tradition and the Individual Talent up StLukes, because that is another dimension of what I'm talking about. Both of these artists are not limited to either poetry or plays. They both wrote non-fiction and can be compared on that level. Yeats wrote his autobiography. He wrote Four Years and essays. Eliot has The Sacred Wood. One thing that I might note about either man is that, like most poets, their prose is in a completely different style than their poetry. Take away the names and you might not know who is writing. As a prose stylist, Eliot sounds just like any other Harvard or Oxford educated academic. He's remarkable only for his ideas, and not for the way he presents them. Anyone who goes to those schools can sound just like him, but I have no idea where one goes to learn to write poetry like that.


Hard to really say at that level. I believe from pure poetic skill of the language, Yeats is solidly ahead. But Eliot really opens up the form to something that wasn't done before him. His originality of conception goes beyond Yeats for sure. Yeats is working within established forms, but the shear poetry of his lines is breath taking. Eliot's poetic lines can be at times flat or even mundane, but the aesthetics of his work transcends.

Those are good ways to compare them. Do you rank originality above skill? Is quantity/output a factor as Mayneverhave suggests? Is longevity the most important? JBI says that Yeats got better as he aged while Eliot's best work was in his thirties. Eliot lived to be 77 and Yeats was 74 when he died. They worked for a long duration in the same time periods; so there's another way they can be compared. JBI suggests that both had strong senses of irony and would subvert traditional forms. Has anyone yet suggested that Yeats was original and innovative, perhaps with the Irish Literary Revival?


I would be more than hesitant to place Eliot above Blake... with or without consideration of his contributions in the visual arts.

I too would be hesitant to discount Blake. In school, I had no more regard for his Tyger or Songs than I did for Byron; but then I saw the other stuff he did: Milton, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, etc. They put the songs to shame. I nearly quoted The Book of Thel to Quasimodo or Blaze recently when one of them was admiring Kalidasa's Cloud Messenger.

"O little Cloud," the virgin said, "I charge thee tell to me
Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away:
Then we shall seek thee, but not find. Ah! Thel is like to thee:
I pass away: yet I complain, and no one hears my voice."

The Cloud then shew'd his golden head and his bright form emerg'd,
Hovering and glittering on the air before the face of Thel.

"O virgin, know'st thou not our steeds drink of the golden springs
Where Luvah doth renew his horses? Look'st thou on my youth,
And fearest thou, because I vanish and am seen no more,
Nothing remains? O maid, I tell thee, when I pass away
It is to tenfold life, to love, to peace and raptures holy:
Unseen descending, weigh my light wings upon balmy flowers,
And court the fair-eyed dew to take me to her shining tent:
The weeping virgin trembling kneels before the risen sun,
Till we arise link'd in a golden band and never part,
But walk united, bearing food to all our tender flowers."
-Book of Thel, Blake

If originality is what you prize, then Blake has it in spades.


he would be a 2, as would Shakespeare. Saying who is the best is not the point, saying who is worth reading more than once is the point.

I really have to disagree with you on this point. However much I love him, I don't think that Eliot is as essential reading as Shakespeare or Dante.


I quite agree with all you say here JBI. Very well said.

It's obvious none of you watch sports. I can hear you right now, "Why don't the Red Wings and the Penguins just share the Stanley Cup? Who care's which is better? They're both good teams. Why did George Foreman and Muhammad Ali have to fight? They should just be proud of who they are."

Here I may have to restate myself. It is precisely because they are so evenly matched that they are worth comparing in the first place. It's not interesting to see Michael Jordan dunking on your kid sister. Doesn't anybody understand the concept of the worthy adversary, or honorable competition anymore? They beg comparison because they are so similar that any differences are notably thrown into relief, with sharpened delineation which would not be there otherwise. Small advantages become characteristic, and offer hints into a deeper understanding of the artists and their respective works. Furthermore, the perceived advantages of either side tell us as much about our own criterion for judging and our critical faculties as they do about the artists themselves. Who you think is better says something about who you are as a person, and as an art lover.

If knowing yourself, appreciating differences, and holding opinions isn't your thing, then what can I tell ya? All I asked you to do was click a button.

[Maximilianus]

Yeats was also a great romantic. some o his greatest poems, No Second Troy, for example were written for a woman.

An anecdote:

From 1889, year when Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a twenty-three year old heiress and ardent Nationalist, he develops an obsessive infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she was to have a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life ever after.
In 1895, he proposes and is rejected. He later admitted that from that point "the troubling of my life began". Yeats then proposes to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901. She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his horror, married the Irish nationalist Major John MacBride.
Yeats' friendship with Gonne persisted, and in Paris in 1908 they finally consummated their relationship. "The long years of fidelity rewarded at last" was how another of his lovers described the event. Yeats was less sentimental and later remarked that "the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul".
Nearly twenty years later, Yeats recalled the night with Gonne in his poem A Man Young and Old:


My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay;
The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all Troy to wreck.

Ah! What ladies do to men! :( :bawling:

[stlukesguild]

It's obvious none of you watch sports. I can hear you right now, "Why don't the Red Wings and the Penguins just share the Stanley Cup? Who care's which is better? They're both good teams. Why did George Foreman and Muhammad Ali have to fight? They should just be proud of who they are."

Here I may have to restate myself. It is precisely because they are so evenly matched that they are worth comparing in the first place.

Certainly. It is of little value to argue whether Shakespeare is better than Tolkein, but Shakespeare vs Milton or Tolstoy or Dante or the Bible demands that one indeed think about the strengths and weaknesses of each and even present arguments as to just what elements or standards (originality, breadth, quantity/quality) define artistic genius. Of course, unlike sports, there will be no clear, agreed-upon "winner". You may decide for yourself that Dante or Milton takes the honors while another may, with equal reasoning, go with Shakespeare.

I too would be hesitant to discount Blake. In school, I had no more regard for his Tyger or Songs than I did for Byron; but then I saw the other stuff he did: Milton, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, etc. They put the songs to shame.

Yes. Far too aften Blake is seen as limited solely to The Songs of Innocence and Experience and a few other bits from the uncollected lyrics of the Rossetti and Pickering Manuscripts. Marvelous as they are, they offer but one side of Blake's output. Certainly the longer texts are challenging... but so is Dante and the Bible and a great deal of the strongest literature. They reward those willing to confront these difficulties in spades. Of course I can understand JBI giving the nod to Eliot because JBI is clearly an Eliot man and Eliot himself was less than enthusiastic about Blake.

[JBI]

Meh, this seems a lot like F. R. Leavis trying to bring down Milton. Quite simply, I would say you shouldn't try to compare them - you've put Shakespeare up on some kind of pedestal, as if he wasn't just as worthy of being criticized as the rest of them. Better to just establish him as a two, worthy of reading and rereading, and then give yourself room to actually read the text, rather than just pledging allegiance to him as grandmaster. I would say, Eliot at his best rivals Shakespeare - certain moments in Four Quartets for example (I personally am always overpowered with Little Gidding IV) and various passages of the Waste Land, notably the Hyacinth girl bit from I, and essentially all of IV (these are personal selections).

Dante was a genius, no doubt, but he too isn't beyond criticism - read Dante, read him in the original, but don't humor him by assigning him a position next to God - it merely makes for bad criticism, and bad reading.

This isn't a sporting event, and poetry, generally, reads better when poets are compared positively and read in relation to each other, rather than put as apposing forces. Ultimately, can we say Eliot could have written Prufrock without Hamlet? Could Shakespeare have written Hamlet without Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, Kyd without his predecessors? How can one even begin to compare, as most great artists make very minimal changes which are generally described as the "Genius" of their work, notably Shakespeare, who stole the bulk of his plots, yet somehow managed to make them not just readable, but life-like.

I think my categories work out nicely - they both are necessary, and you wouldn't really criticize someone for reading one poet constantly over another, assuming it was a good poet. If I see someone constantly reading Shakespeare, I think they are privileged - if ?I see them reading Keats nonstop, they too are privileged - to say someone is wasting their time with Keats, for not reading Shakespeare is absurd.


If someone was making a list of all the major poets in the language worth reading to understand poetry, no doubt both Eliot and Yeats would be on there. I would argue, judging just on poetry, Yeats is probably unrivaled, but that is just an idiosyncratic judgment, and means nothing, and doesn't really help anyone understand Yeats, or poetry.

[Jozanny]

JBI,

I am not really into this argument, for reasons previously given, but using comparative methods is how we make judgments about the arts. For you, Yeats and Eliot may be respective giants, open and shut, but mortal is within his rights to weigh who is the superior poet for himself.

I tired of studying Eliot before I ever set foot in my universities, so I have no real investment in persuasion on either end--but literary texts of all stripes are in dialectic rivalry of some sort.

To compare my work to Eliot's, or Yeats, for that matter, would be idiotic, so there are boundaries, but to read Joanne Marinelli next to Robert Thomas, or Vassar Miller, or Laurel Speer, this is within reason, and it is within reason to examine classics against each other.

I think Eliot is superior to Yeats, and invoking Hellenism or Romanticism has nothing to do with it. As I think JCamilo tried to inject, a reader cannot know everything. I don't and consider that it might benumb my critical facility to try. You don't either, but you try to, and maybe that interferes somewhat. There is a balance between appreciating authors for themselves as much as for what they allude to or invoke--and Yeats, for me, needs something more, like a Donne factor, that just isn't there for me.

Donne was a formalist, and played wit on his words, but there is a very human voice in his poetry.

Yeats muzzles his voice behind an ironclad lock, and mayneverhave summed it up pretty well as my verbiage does. He's an anachronism within his time.

[JCamilo]

It is not like Dante or Shakespeare are above criticism or flawless, does not matter if you have a 0,1,2,critery, it is a ranking anyways. Mortal is asking about the ranking of guys in the main stage, so among numbers 2, who is 0,1,2 and I sure Shakespeare and Dante would be numbers 2 of the number 2 groups. But even so... One would say Goethe could be there, Virgil, Ovid... anyways, just look the range of disagreement here (and not so many people posting, this turned to be the first time I see a poll "who is better" dominated by the elitists of the forum, something already funny), it is all a matter of preference. To me Keats is as good as Blake, but if someone say otherwise I can live with that. Fernando Pessoa is better than Yeats and Eliot, but I do not see many here jumping in my bandwagon. Since we are already complicated by the inclusion of Milton, why not Chaucer, Camoes, Goethe, Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Emily Dickinson?
I watch sports enough to know the notion of worth adversary, but really, it is not how things are going to work here. To know who is the better in sports you just need to check the score. This is not the case, most of real rivalirities in this field are more funny to hear than informative. I think all this argument about sports is returning to the ambition argument that happened in the thread about long poems or short poems we had sometime ago.
And yes, Jozanny, the large amount of immortality of all those guys are due to readers who are conquered by the superficial reading, Yeats poems are even at superficial level, enjoyable, so is Keats. You do not need much of critical study to just read their best lines and remember. (Not saying it does not happens with Eliot, btw)...

[Virgil]

Those are good ways to compare them. Do you rank originality above skill?
It depends what you mean by originality. Like I said Yeats had the more original poeticism while Eliot had the more original form. Both are important. Literary critics tend to value the form, while poets and writers probably tend to value the poetic line. I tend to lean toward the poets and writers. Here's a great Yeats poem from shortly before his death:


The Circus Animals' Desertion
by William Butler Yeats

I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II

What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intetvened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

III

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

Shear brilliance for me. Just incredible how the language flows so smoothly with oriuginality, how the images all work together, how the sound of it just coordinates.


Is quantity/output a factor as Mayneverhave suggests? Is longevity the most important?
It's important but not conclusive. Keats did not have a huge output but he is a great poet. Of course if you don't have a sizable output your small output has to be so much better. One can think of it as reaching a critical mass. Keats' great Odes have such brilliance to them that they have an incredible density of mass that make up for cumulation of pieces. [Sorry for the scientic anaolgy, but i am an engineer after all. ;)]


JBI says that Yeats got better as he aged while Eliot's best work was in his thirties. Eliot lived to be 77 and Yeats was 74 when he died. They worked for a long duration in the same time periods; so there's another way they can be compared.
I would agree with that to some degree. Yeats' last ten years of poetry was astounding, but that's not to say he didn't have great stuff earlier on. Eliot essentially stopped writing poetry after The Four Quartets, which were started before WWII and completed not much after. Eliot went on to live another 30-ish years without any poetic writing, only essays and plays. And those plays aren't exactly great drama. Something happened to him post WWII, and to the whole modernist movement. Pound essentially didn't write much either post 1950.


JBI suggests that both had strong senses of irony and would subvert traditional forms. Has anyone yet suggested that Yeats was original and innovative, perhaps with the Irish Literary Revival?
Any great writer will either subvert established forms or as I like to look at it push for new forms. Actually the notion of modernism, of which they were conscious of, pushed them to do so.


It's obvious none of you watch sports. I can hear you right now, "Why don't the Red Wings and the Penguins just share the Stanley Cup? Who care's which is better? They're both good teams. Why did George Foreman and Muhammad Ali have to fight? They should just be proud of who they are."
:lol: I watch plenty of sports. How's this for an anonlogy: You can't compare players from one era with that of another. Who's the greater centerfielder, Joe DiMagio or Ken Griffey Jr.? It's a fruitless exercise. But I guess for a literary forum it''s a fun play if one doesn't take it too seriously.

[mortalterror]

Meh, this seems a lot like F. R. Leavis trying to bring down Milton. Quite simply, I would say you shouldn't try to compare them - you've put Shakespeare up on some kind of pedestal, as if he wasn't just as worthy of being criticized as the rest of them. Better to just establish him as a two, worthy of reading and rereading, and then give yourself room to actually read the text, rather than just pledging allegiance to him as grandmaster. I would say, Eliot at his best rivals Shakespeare - certain moments in Four Quartets for example (I personally am always overpowered with Little Gidding IV) and various passages of the Waste Land, notably the Hyacinth girl bit from I, and essentially all of IV (these are personal selections).

You know I don't put Shakespeare on a pedestal. I've made no secret of my distaste for Henry VI, Cymbeline, A Winter's Tale, Henry VIII, and Pericles. But I think you may be putting Eliot on a pedestal. I love him. He's one of my favorites; but put a gun to my head, Sophie's Choice, I'm in a burning library surrounded by the only copies of famous books and only have time to save so many à la The Name of the Rose, I don't pick The Wasteland first. I can think of twenty books better just off the top of my head.
1.Hamlet
2.Romeo and Juliet
3.King Lear
4.Julius Caesar
5.Macbeth
6.Twelfth Night
7.Othello
8.Henry IV part I
9.Henry V
10.Divine Comedy
11.Shahnameh
12.Ovid's Metamorphoses
13.Paradise Lost
14.The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
15.The Oresteia
16.Lysistrata
17.Plato's Republic
18.Life is a Dream
19.Moby Dick
20.Canterbury Tales
I'd save The Wasteland somewhere around 30 or 40, after War and Peace, Goethe's Faust, The Odyssey, and Montaigne's Essays. Shocking it may be, but I believe there are better writers than Eliot. To me, he's just one of the best of the last century. Let's try and keep things in perspective. The Wasteland is great, but you can only do so much with twenty/twenty-five pages.

I also have trouble with your 012 ranking system. I'd rather rank the individual artists across a gamut of categories, than sum up their abilities with a single raw number. Overall score Shakespeare is still a 10, but his plotting would be a 2, and his originality would be a three or a four. Calderon is more like a 9. His verse is about a 7 or 8, but his plotting and action are 10s. Shakespeare's action scenes are usually the worst part of his plays. I've never seen them done convincingly. He's a great speech maker, and he's very sententious. He get's that from Seneca, who's also not so original or great at plot. Shakespeare does character better than Aeschylus, though their verses are roughly the same. I think Chekhov did character just as well, but his plays are all psychology. Chekhov doesn't bring to bare as many assets to the game.

That's sort of how I feel about Eliot. His verses can be as good as Shakespeare's, but Shakespeare brings more to the table than just good verse. He's got characters, action, and compelling narratives which Eliot does not have. Although I will say this for him. I read the first half of Murder in the Cathedral and it was very good. It's not Hamlet but it was good. But this is supposed to be about comparing Yeats to Eliot not Shakespeare to Eliot.

:lol: I watch plenty of sports. How's this for an anonlogy: You can't compare players from one era with that of another. Who's the greater centerfielder, Joe DiMagio or Ken Griffey Jr.? It's a fruitless exercise. But I guess for a literary forum it''s a fun play if one doesn't take it too seriously.
"The Yankees cannot lose."
"But I fear the Indians of Cleveland."
"Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."
"I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland."
"Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sox of Chicago."
-Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Ken Griffey Jr. never married Marilyn Monroe. Besides, I have a sentimental streak for the past. And I do love to play that kind of game. I love a good comparison. Dickens vs. Hugo, Hemingway vs. Faulkner, Fitzgerald vs. Flaubert, Tolstoy vs. Proust, Virgil vs. Milton, Keats vs Marlowe, Villon vs. Rimbaud. I like to contrast things, to take away everything that is similar and see what remains.

There's another saying in boxing, "Styles make fights." Disharmony or symmetry are both fun to watch, be it Ward Gatti I or Robinson LaMotta VI.

[stlukesguild]

Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.

Again... Eliot himself makes suggestions that echo some of JBI's arguments: No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone... Certainly this is true to an extent. I would not take it so far as to suggest that you cannot appreciate of understand Shakespeare without having read Spenser, Kyd, Chaucer, Seneca, etc... All these add further levels... interrelationships that are essentially the reason that reading the same book at 16 and again at 30 and again at 50 will be vastly different experiences. It is not that the book has changed but we have. Still, I would not place these interrelationships... these influences at the center of what makes a work of art great or worth the experience. Cezanne, for example, is not merely a great painter because of the impact he had on Cubism. His historical worth may be all the greater for his influence... but he would still be an artist worthy of seeing.

On the other hand, Eliot also suggests that for most of us there is something of an ideal order or heirarchy in the arts. It is the reason we flinch when some inane critic compares the latest writer with Shakespeare, the newest rising art star with Picasso or Rembrandt, or even an up-and-coming singer-songwriter with Bob Dylan. To admit to a heirarchy is not to suggest that comparison and contrast are not to be allowed... such is human nature... seeking out that which speaks best to us. It is not to suggest that those at the pinnacle are not without weaknesses and are above all criticism. Michelangelo is undoubtedly (to my mind) the Shakespeare of the visual arts in Western culture... still his landscapes are rudimentary at best, he has none of the lightness of touch of Bonnard, and his people lack the humanity of Rembrandt. I can admit to such without needing to suggest that Michelangelo is at the same level as Bonnard... just one of a number of essential artists.

Ken Griffey Jr. never married Marilyn Monroe.

:lol::thumbs_up:lol::thumbs_up

And I do love to play that kind of game. I love a good comparison. Dickens vs. Hugo, Hemingway vs. Faulkner, Fitzgerald vs. Flaubert, Tolstoy vs. Proust, Virgil vs Milton. I like to contrast things...

And if we are at all honest with ourselves I believe we will admit that we all do the same. As Pater suggests in the conclusion to The Renaissance we all have but a limited time to get as many impulses... as many marvelous experiences as possible. As such we must continually make decisions as to what is worth our time or not.

Yeats muzzles his voice behind an ironclad lock... He's an anachronism within his time.

Nonsense. You merely have a clear preference for the harder voice of high Modernism... and Yeats is a poet coming out of Romanticism and Symbolism and moving into Modernism. Schoenberg and Weber are certainly more clearly Modernist than Richard Strauss and Rachmaninoff... but this does not make them inherently better artists. I don't think the linear notion of artistic Darwinism... the notion that there is a single strongest voice of a given time or place... holds any credence anymore. Pessoa, Rilke, Federico Garcia-Lorca, Boris Pasternak, Pablo Neruda, Eugenio Montale, etc... all offer voices different from Eliot and worthy of comparison contrast. The fact that Eliot's voice may have been the dominant influence on subsequent developments in English poetry in no way assures him the crown.

[Jozanny]

Yeats muzzles his voice behind an ironclad lock... He's an anachronism within his time.

Nonsense. You merely have a clear preference for the harder voice of high Modernism... and Yeats is a poet coming out of Romanticism and Symbolism and moving into Modernism. Schoenberg and Weber are certainly more clearly Modernist than Richard Strauss and Rachmaninoff... but this does not make them inherently better artists. I don't think the linear notion of artistic Darwinism... the notion that there is a single strongest voice of a given time or place... holds any credence anymore.

How you believe that I apply the theory of evolution to literary appreciation simply because I am indifferent to certain motifs is beyond me. I had a very poor experience as a student of Thomas Kinsella, so perhaps that has something to do with my certain residue of distaste, if you would like that as an apologia. I am not linear, but certain periods suggest more fluidity than others, and Yeats just doesn't bridge the gap for me, and nothing you or JBI has offered changes that, thus far. JCamilo came closest: On a superficial level, Yeats is proficient.

Beyond this, I have nothing more to offer, as I am past Eliot too. I've studied him in too many classes, read far too many attributions and debts, and any renewed appreciation will come at my own pace.

[JCamilo]

I hope nobody thinks that I am claiming that Yeats is superficial or that only what is able to please the commun reader is legitmate, otherwise Poe and his raven would be masters, and Poe greatness came from his whole work (short stories, critics, poems and Eureka), but just as poet he is not as awesome, because his system failed more often that had sucess, than the likes of X,Y,Z already mentioned in this thread.

[Jozanny]

I hope nobody thinks that I am claiming that Yeats is superficial or that only what is able to please the commun reader is legitmate, otherwise Poe and his raven would be masters, and Poe greatness came from his whole work (short stories, critics, poems and Eureka), but just as poet he is not as awesome, because his system failed more often that had sucess, than the likes of X,Y,Z already mentioned in this thread.

Not at all J. I only meant your assessment came closest to footing the bill for me. Eliot, too, on some level, is very superficial, a puppeteer nearly a parody of what his original advent in the world of letters must have been--in this sense maybe he is damaged by the relentless drum beat of academia, though he caters to the creation of his own paradigm, in a way. Coletta charges him with the sin of a synchronic literary theory, and she is probably right.

I don't have the energy to dissect and digress on the Eliot bauble. Once upon a time I used to be a real writer, not always, but for a brief period I really sang for my supper, and I have no idea what I am doing here if these superlative musings fail to interest me, though it is easy enough to name procrastination for what it is :rolleyes:!

***
Maybe because it does interest me, but not really as mortal intended his points of comparison. JBI and luke see in Yeats a transcendent romantic neo-classicism?, while I miss the authentic voice behind that.

Take Robert Browning, who is give or take some thirty years behind Yeats. In the mature Browning dramatic monologue, there is a voice which is nothing but Browning, in a dialectic that goes beyond mere Victorian norms. That Browning is a richer and deeper poet for me hardly proves I have a *Darwinistic* mind set, as his zenith is reached well before Yeats takes the stage.

[JCamilo]

Browning, I sure forgot to add him to complicate the matters about ranking. Mortal rank of books he would save from fire, I bet in 3 months he would change the place of those books ...
Anyways, I think good poetry have often superficial appeal. From Homer to Eliot (I remember reading/translating Naming of Cats to my young sisters some years ago and they liked it) and the mistake of concrete poetry is often forgetting it. Some more than others, in the case of Yeats, because romanticism and mysticism are appealing those days.

[mayneverhave]

Browning, I sure forgot to add him to complicate the matters about ranking. Mortal rank of books he would save from fire, I bet in 3 months he would change the place of those books ...
Anyways, I think good poetry have often superficial appeal. From Homer to Eliot (I remember reading/translating Naming of Cats to my young sisters some years ago and they liked it) and the mistake of concrete poetry is often forgetting it. Some more than others, in the case of Yeats, because romanticism and mysticism are appealing those days.

You bring up a good point at the end, there. Ultimately, it is the critic's job to place himself outside of fashions and movements, and attempt to judge a poet objectively.

Head to head comparisons are interesting, although JBI is right to the degree that poets may exist, and be great in their own way.

Unfortunately though, it is hard to say exatly what "great" or "best" mean when we look at artists individually. Not only do close analyses of two similiar artists reveal subtleties and intricacies about the writers, but also provides a sort of scale to analyze them.

If I say As You Like It is a fantastic play - that is a statement of relative meaninglessness, unless I explain it, or compare it with another play - necessarily one similiar enough to provide a comparison. Saying As You Like It is superior to Hamlet is quite a different thing, and provides a meaning that isolating As You Like It does not provide.

Ultimately, however, besides their similarities in time, Eliot and Yeats are very different, and it might be more fruitful to compare Eliot and Pound or Eliot and Stevens, and Yeats with the 19th century, than Eliot and Yeats.

Compare The Second Coming and The Waste Land. Both are considered masterworks and are key pieces to their creator's reputations (with the Waste Land contributing more to Eliot's reputation than the Second Coming to Yeats's.)

The Second Coming is relatively tame, formally, and instead derives its power primarily from its prophetic tone, imagery (especially the chilling final image), and its place in Yeats's gyre laden philosophy of history and time. These are all fine things, and appealing to me (and apparently a host of others). Yeats's poetry tends to deal with issues of decay (associated with aging), permance (associated with inheritence; i.e. The Tower, itself), and with mysticism (his obsession with the moon and its lunar influence on humans).

Eliot is primarily concerned with modern, urban life (at least in his early stage). I can say nothing of the Eliot post 1930, as of yet, and it seems to me he is a different poet entirely.

The Waste Land deals with a jolt to the continuity of seasonal change, recurrance, and rebirth. It summons up images of modern life, a loss of the prophetic spirit, and brings together a large array of multicultural images to suggest a universal problem. The final section of the Waste Land suggests a movement towards the bringing together of Eastern and Western imagery through its invocation of the Upanishads.

Yeats and Eliot are similiar in their problem of cultural decay, but this is a problem that many poets share. Ultimately, when dealing with masters such as these, it comes down to what imagery is more moving to the reader, personally.

[Jozanny]

C'mon Jozie... you know better than to play that game. You put up a good early Yeats against Eliot knowing that such will appear pale... not unlike a good Victorian painting placed against Picasso. What of Yeats at his strongest? What of The Tower, Sailing to Byzantium, Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, Lapis Lazuli, or Easter Sunday:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
*****

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
?

By the way... I'm not getting your obsession with Yeats as merely another in the line of Irish literature. His real predecessors as as much or far more the great Romantics (especially Blake and Shelley).

One, I never really cared for Blake's fanatic pyrotechnics. You do, and that is perfectly fine--but to the degree that Yeats taps a more delicate form of over wrought mysticism *gyre* and alluding to Blake's personal mythologized characters, it just isn't my thing. The Great War poem in the poem of the week thread, with its quiet poignancy, is far superior in emotional movement for me, than SC.


Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

These four lines lose, and lose badly, to the degree that Yeats is taking chances at all, although if he is creating a double entendre between Christianity's triumphalist event and ejaculation, then I do have to give him slightly more credit.


And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This Sphinx as threat is decent, but not enough for me to froth at the mouth throw myself prostrate and start speaking in tongues.

I do not really enjoy Yeats luke, and to the degree that he is Anglicanized, yes, I think it lessens his importance, not enlarges upon it.

Do I hate him? No.
Do I appreciate the labored effort that is self-evident in his technical mastery? To a degree.

But Browning's zest, and his passion and enthusiasm to narrate and reconstruct Medieval morality, towards a larger truth, comes closer to my own zeal for narrative imagery; Eliot's dissonance is more profound, Keats' more revealing of fragility.

As a published poet I have the right to my own claims, and nonsense is not its base. If the man had taken some greater risk toward an authentic timbre that I could recognize as his own, I'd be more forgiving.

[Red-Headed]

I think although Eliot was never as prolific as Yeats, he was more important in developing the poetry of the 20th century. Once you get over Yeat's Celtic twilight period & his politics (let alone his obsession with Maude Gonne) you can't deny he wasn't a truly brilliant poet. I know somebody who's father actually met Yeats when he was a little boy at a school in Dublin when Yeats was working as a schools inspector. However, I think that Eliot contributed more to the 20th century in many ways, particularly with his contribution to & influence by the Imagists. The Waste Land itself was probably more influential than The Green Helmet, The Wild Swans At Coole & Michael Robartes And The Dancer put together.

[stlukesguild]

I think although Eliot was never as prolific as Yeats, he was more important in developing the poetry of the 20th century. Once you get over Yeat's Celtic twilight period & his politics (let alone his obsession with Maude Gonne) you can't deny he wasn't a truly brilliant poet.

Nonsense. Whether Yeats had less influence upon Modernism and 20th century poetry in general is irrelevant to whether Yeats was a brilliant poet or not. One might as well suggest that Schoenberg was a greater composer than Debussy or Mahler simply because he had a far greater impact upon Modernism. As much as I love Modernism, it is not the measure or standard of all that was or is good in art. Yeats preceded Eliot by some 20 years. As a poet he was a transitional figure straddling different eras. Personally I agree with Virgil who notes that as a poet Yeats continues to grow in depth and mature with age where Eliot is virtually burned out as a poet by 1945. Of course the historical impact of the artist is but a single measure of his merit. J.S. Bach, for example, was largely ignored as outdated by the end of his career... in spite of the fact that he was clearly the greatest composer of his time... and perhaps of all time. It is the quality of the art that matters most and Yeats is far from being a minor poet.

[Red-Headed]

I think although Eliot was never as prolific as Yeats, he was more important in developing the poetry of the 20th century. Once you get over Yeat's Celtic twilight period & his politics (let alone his obsession with Maude Gonne) you can't deny he wasn't a truly brilliant poet.

Nonsense.

Which bit is nonsense? Yeats may have been more prolific & did indeed seem to straddle two eras, however I believe he was a great poet, so I am not sure just what you are getting at here. I just don't think that his effect & influence was as potent as Eliot's was in the 20th century.



Whether Yeats had less influence upon Modernism and 20th century poetry in general is irrelevant to whether Yeats was a brilliant poet or not.

OK. What's your point?


One might as well suggest that Schoenberg was a greater composer than Debussy or Mahler simply because he had a far greater impact upon Modernism. As much as I love Modernism, it is not the measure or standard of all that was or is good in art. Yeats preceded Eliot by some 20 years. As a poet he was a transitional figure straddling different eras. Personally I agree with Virgil who notes that as a poet Yeats continues to grow in depth and mature with age where Eliot is virtually burned out as a poet by 1945. Of course the historical impact of the artist is but a single measure of his merit. J.S. Bach, for example, was largely ignored as outdated by the end of his career... in spite of the fact that he was clearly the greatest composer of his time... and perhaps of all time. It is the quality of the art that matters most and Yeats is far from being a minor poet.

I would never claim that Yeats was a minor or a non-influential poet. I just think that Eliot captured the nihilism or zeitgeist of the early 20th century (particularly after WW1) & its search for spirituality & cultural identity, particularly well. I also think that the Imagist poets were far more influential, on both sides of the Atlantic, than many people give them credit for. Pound may have been a tad eccentric, but his editing of The Waste Land shouldn't be ignored, nor Eliot's connection to the Imagist movement. The Imagists, in my opinion were more of an influence on the Pylon poets & later movements. I think that Eliot was more influential in my country anyway.

[stlukesguild]

you can't deny he wasn't a truly brilliant poet.

Means he wasn't a brilliant poet. Perhaps a typo? My point was simply that Eliot and Yeats are two different poets from different eras with different strengths and weaknesses. If I was in the proverbial burning building and could only save one of the two I would be certainly torn. It would perhaps depend upon my mood. Eliot's Wasteland, Prufrock, Four Quartets, etc... are magnificent monuments of Modernist poetry. Yeats is a very different poet with perhaps a greater breadth. He produced nothing of the monumental nature of Eliot (of course it might be noted that Eliot produced nothing on the scale of Blake, Milton, or Dante)... but I find him a greater lyric poet.

What of Neruda?

[JCamilo]

I would say that Yeats is influential to the whole new-paganism, mystic literature after him. There wouldn't be much interest without Yeats help on celtic topics, etc.

Neruda does not count, he was communist, I mean Ruben Dário with romantic ideals :D

[Red-Headed]

you can't deny he wasn't a truly brilliant poet.

Means he wasn't a brilliant poet. Perhaps a typo?

Well, it's 2:16 AM in my country & I seriously need some Lapsang tea. I tend to hallucinate after a couple of hours in front of a laptop TFT. Must be a typo. Either that or a dialect issue. The odd thing is that it still seems to make sense to me. I haven't been drinking either!


My point was simply that Eliot and Yeats are two different poets from different eras with different strengths and weaknesses. If I was in the proverbial burning building and could only save one of the two I would be certainly torn. It would perhaps depend upon my mood. Eliot's Wasteland, Prufrock, Four Quartets, etc... are magnificent monuments of Modernist poetry. Yeats is a very different poet with perhaps a greater breadth. He produced nothing of the monumental nature of Eliot (of course it might be noted that Eliot produced nothing on the scale of Blake, Milton, or Dante)... but I find him a greater lyric poet.

I think Yeats had more breadth, but he wrote far more work. He had far more diverse interests than Eliot as well. I remember arguing with my English professor at university about the relevance of Yeats being a member of the Golden Dawn. There was even an original copy of 'A Vision' in the university library (reference only of course, if that left the library it wouldn't come back). I admire the streak of mysticism in Yeats. I'm not so sure about Eliot's conversion to Anglicanism. Maybe it seemed exotic to him at the time or something.


What of Neruda?

The Czech poet? The only poet I like in translation is Brecht. I have heard Pushkin in Russian spoken by a Russian in Stratford upon Avon. Even Sir Ian McKellen was there ( he introduced the Pushkin celebration) & it sounds wonderful in Russian. Doesn't translate well in my opinion. I do love haiku translations though. In fact I have a blog post here.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/blog.php?b=8358

[JCamilo]

nah, Neruda the chilean poet, Walt Whimaniasque...

[mortalterror]

Yeats preceded Eliot by some 20 years. As a poet he was a transitional figure straddling different eras....Of course the historical impact of the artist is but a single measure of his merit. ...It is the quality of the art that matters most and Yeats is far from being a minor poet.

Now, that's interesting. Are you of the opinion that transitional poets have less opportunity to be influential than those who get in at the ground floor of a movement? If that is true, then fellows who come in during the middle or end of a period would tend to get the shaft. The only way to be relevant would be for every artist to start his own movement.

[stlukesguild]

I never even thought of Neruda the Czech poet as I've never come across him in translation... although I have heard of him... especially in a volume of poetry by Jaroslav Seifert. But JCamilo is of course correct. I was referring to Pablo Neruda who may just be both far better and far more influential (in the long run) than either Eliot or Yeats.

[JCamilo]

well, I would say that there is no such thing as transitional musician, poet, singer, etc. While you are producing you are the conclusion of everything and I doubt anyone ever saw themselves as a bridge between a past fellow and a future fellow they are not aware.
Thus, it is more of that thing, we re-write the past, transform people as transitional exactly because it usually means someone who is starting the job for a great one who finished it.
In the way Stlukes used Yeas as transitional, I would say he is a represenative of a romantic nature that often resides in human art. He didnt actually worked as a path from Keats to Yeats, leading to whom?

[JCamilo]

I never even thought of Neruda the Czech poet as I've never come across him in translation... although I have heard of him... especially in a volume of poetry by Jaroslav Seifert. But JCamilo is of course correct. I was referring to Pablo Neruda who may just be both far better and far more influential (in the long run) than either Eliot or Yeats.

I think that is a risk bet. Neruda ties with politics outdated much of his work. His lyrical poetry still good and read, but the presence of Marquez and Borges in South America kind off split the attention (and Borges is a great poet as well). At sametime he was writing, Carlos Drummond de Andrade was doing a job as good as him in Brazil. I would place my bet on Fernando Pessoa. Not only because he incorportate the walt whitman of Neruda, but Borges, the modernism and even some romantic lyrics and traditional classicist forms from Camoes. I would say that right now Pessoa is a more living subject than both Eliot and Yeats.

[mayneverhave]

well, I would say that there is no such thing as transitional musician, poet, singer, etc. While you are producing you are the conclusion of everything and I doubt anyone ever saw themselves as a bridge between a past fellow and a future fellow they are not aware.
Thus, it is more of that thing, we re-write the past, transform people as transitional exactly because it usually means someone who is starting the job for a great one who finished it.
In the way Stlukes used Yeas as transitional, I would say he is a represenative of a romantic nature that often resides in human art. He didnt actually worked as a path from Keats to Yeats, leading to whom?

Would you not describe Beethoven as a transitional composer between the Classical and Romantic periods?

[stlukesguild]

Now, that's interesting. Are you of the opinion that transitional poets have less opportunity to be influential than those who get in at the ground floor of a movement? If that is true, then fellows who come in during the middle or end of a period would tend to get the shaft. The only way to be relevant would be for every artist to start his own movement.

Of course that is not my assertion. Eliot is simply the figure who seemingly establishes the direction of Modernism with a truly iconic work. Not unlike what Picasso does with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon or Stravinsky with the Rite of Spring. The work is undoubtedly great... but it also owes much to the poet being in the right place at the right time and to the subsequent direction taken by those after. In art transitional figures might include Cezanne and the late Monet... who essentially continued in the vein of Impressionism but took it in a direction that was at once removed from Cubism and other strains of early Modernism... but that would have a profound impact upon later art (especially Abstract Expressionism). For all Eliot's impact upon subsequent Modernism we might ask what his influence is now. The impact of a poet on subsequent generations is surely a measure of an artist's merit... but it would seem that very few artists see their influence carry on in any seriously grand manner for generations. In the end it seems its the work itself that matters.

Besides... surely Dante is a transitional figure? Does he not straddle the line from medieval scholasticism to the human and individual-centered Renaissance?

[stlukesguild]

I would say that there is no such thing as transitional musician, poet, singer, etc. While you are producing you are the conclusion of everything and I doubt anyone ever saw themselves as a bridge between a past fellow and a future fellow they are not aware.

I agree. Certainly no poet or artist of any sort sees his or her work as merely a bridge from one era to the next. Such is an interpretation imposed by subsequent generations. Perhaps the leading iconic figures and works of art are clear in their own time. It was clear in Wagner's time that he was THE composer to be dealt with. It was clear by the first decade of the 20th century that Picasso was THE artist... followed by Matisse. But is Cezanne merely a transition from Impressionism to the Modernism/Cubism that he could not have imagined? Are we to believe that had Picasso not come about that Cezanne would be a minor figure? Are we to suggest that Yeat's worth is merely in moving us from late Romanticism and Symbolism into Modernism? The reality is that every historical style is but a construct of later scholars and historians trying to make some sense of the larger picture. To answer the question as to whether Beethoven is a transitional figure from Classicism to Romanticism... certainly... he and Schubert and Schumann. But then again... might we not simply suggest that Wagner... the very heart of Romanticism... was a transitional figure in the move from Classicism to Modernism?

[JCamilo]

Would you not describe Beethoven as a transitional composer between the Classical and Romantic periods?

Yes, sure. And Mozart a transitional composer between him and Bach or anything else. But this because we took the decision to place a start and an end (for no reason, music continued) and dediced he is in the middle. Using this same arbitrary power i could also say he is the end of clasical period. Just irrelevant, Yeats called himself the last of romantics, we just called him a transitory author, all of this really means nothing.

[stlukesguild]

I think that is a risk bet. Neruda ties with politics outdated much of his work. His lyrical poetry still good and read, but the presence of Marquez and Borges in South America kind off split the attention (and Borges is a great poet as well).

Considering Latin American literature in general... and perhaps the whole of Post-Modern literature I would certainly place Borges near if not at the pinnacle. Considering poetry, however, I suspect Neruda to be far more central (in spite of the fact that I greatly admire Borges' poetry). I agree that some of Neruda's work has been marred by his political stances... especially certain portions of Canto General. On the other hand the Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, The Captains Verses, Residence on Earth, and other volumes hold up magnificently... even in tranlation. This, I would suggest, is Carlos Drummond de Andrade's undoing. He has not yet translated well or often... at least not into English. As much as I love and collect Spanish and Latin-American poetry I have yet to come across a volume of his work (the sole volume available at Amazon.com is out of print). Neruda, on the other hand, ranks along Rilke as perhaps the Modern poet that has been translated the most. This certainly suggests a major following even outside of the Spanish-speaking world.


I would place my bet on Fernando Pessoa.

You may be right there. Pessoa is something of a dark horse. He has seemingly come out of hiding... from being largely ignored and unknown... to being seen as a truly major player. I have seven volumes of prose and poetry by him myself... and there are still reams of work (that notorious foot-locker!) which have not been sorted out, collated, edited, and published... let alone translated. His "hetronyms" alone are an absolute magnificent literary invention through which he not only undermines the Romantic notion of the poet's one true voice... but through which he is able to speak in a multitude of voices (Whitman's "I contain multitudes" given concrete form?) as readily, fluidly, and believably as any novelist or playwright can through his of her invented characters.

[mortalterror]

Pessoa is something of a dark horse. He has seemingly come out of hiding... from being largely ignored and unknown... to being seen as a truly major player. I have seven volumes of prose and poetry by him myself... and there are still reams of work (that notorious foot-locker!) which have not been sorted out, collated, edited, and published... let alone translated. His "hetronyms" alone are an absolute magnificent literary invention through which he not only undermines the Romantic notion of the poet's one true voice... but through which he is able to speak in a multitude of voices (Whitman's "I contain multitudes" given concrete form?) as readily, fluidly, and believably as any novelist or playwright can through his of her invented characters.

There I disagree. The heteronyms really get on my nerves. It's such an obvious gimmick. When I was reading The Book of Disquiet, I was enraptured by the style, infatuated by the thoughts, but annoyed that he didn't choose to develop any of his material for more than a few pages. I think that Pessoa is a great literary figure in spite of that garbage.

Still, I'd like to withhold final judgement until we know all the stuff Pessoa actually wrote. It's a fine thing to say that Pessoa is better than Eliot, but what poems are you basing that opinion on? Did he write anything better than The Wasteland? Not that I've seen. His innovations and style and what not are impressive but I feel that great poets need to write truly great poems. From where we stand right now, Pessoa is at the stage of his posterity that Hopkins was in the 1920s. There's all this speculation about lost treasure and steamer trunks. Everybody imagines that he's got something amazing just tucked away and in a few years we're going to have another Lusiad or something. I say, let's take it slow, judge his poems as they come out, and then give them time to settle into the canon and find their place.

[Silenced Chaos]

Eliot catches my mind and keeps it frozen, whereas Yeats in fact frees it. Eliot's complexity and its unavoidable randomness provide his poetry with that halo of greatness which, however, restricts enjoyment. His mind arises as an arrogant figure of creation and punishes the lack of intellectual attention with an ever-growing confussion. Yeats, contrarily, shares the process of building taking you by the hand and, with no need of explanation to his never simple meanings, makes you feel the mystery of his words.

On one hand Yeats's poetry reaches and moves you more inevitably: his poems approach step by step, and softly claim an effect. Eliot's lines struggle to even whisper in your ear when they are already making your brain feel sore. If I must select a favourite, which is never calling either 'the best'! I must select the Irish man; his poetry touches, for me, more instantaneously and gladly.

[Jozanny]

Yeats called himself the last of romantics, we just called him a transitory author, all of this really means nothing.

Perhaps, but if Yeats called himself the last, then he must have had a sense that Romanticism was exhausted. It happens. Modernist poetics burned itself out into the weakness of confessional poetics, and in the US, the Beat movement probably started its death throes shortly before Ginsberg passed away.

Again, I do get a sense of strength ebbing away in Yeats, from the small selection of his work which I know well, but I can see why mortalterror is conflicted in his sentiments. Yeats has a muscular grandiosity that thunders along, whereas Eliot takes a sledge hammer to the lost world order and declares it to be anesthetized.

I cannot really speak to your neck of the woods JCam; I have some Paz in translation lying about, and some Spanish speaking poets contemporaneous to me from various small presses, but I have no confidence to assess, as I am not that well read in both Spanish and Latin poets.

[Red-Headed]

I was referring to Pablo Neruda who may just be both far better and far more influential (in the long run) than either Eliot or Yeats.

Neruda is not particularly well known in my country. In English & Welsh schools & colleges it is more likely that pupils will study indigenous or Commonwealth poets. Very few North American poets are actually studied, let alone South American ones.

[JCamilo]

Considering Latin American literature in general... and perhaps the whole of Post-Modern literature I would certainly place Borges near if not at the pinnacle. Considering poetry, however, I suspect Neruda to be far more central (in spite of the fact that I greatly admire Borges' poetry). I agree that some of Neruda's work has been marred by his political stances... especially certain portions of Canto General. On the other hand the Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, The Captains Verses, Residence on Earth, and other volumes hold up magnificently... even in tranlation. This, I would suggest, is Carlos Drummond de Andrade's undoing. He has not yet translated well or often... at least not into English. As much as I love and collect Spanish and Latin-American poetry I have yet to come across a volume of his work (the sole volume available at Amazon.com is out of print). Neruda, on the other hand, ranks along Rilke as perhaps the Modern poet that has been translated the most. This certainly suggests a major following even outside of the Spanish-speaking world.

No disagreement about Neruda, in the end being a better poet than Borges, at least a more lively voice. The only thing is that Borges domains so much the scenario in Latin America (plus Neruda and Borges feud is the history of latin america poetry and Borges ended with the last word, exactly because he had the support of something else besides poetry) that Neruda influence may be hampered. Not that he is not, since he is a major players, perhaps one of the few poets who managed to be political and great in the XX century.
Portuguese and mostly brazilian literature have really a record of non-translation that is unexplainable. Ok, portuguese demands much from translator, specially when translated to english, but Drummond or Guimaraes Rosa (or Machado de Assis in the last century) are not dwarfs in this field and I noticed for what it seems there is no printing of their translations. Brazilian literature had their own path, pararel to the rest of latin america, so when the boom of Magic Realism happened we are put aside. And now we have a major international name but he is lame that his writing does not provoke the desire to know the other brazilians.

[JCamilo]

There I disagree. The heteronyms really get on my nerves. It's such an obvious gimmick. When I was reading The Book of Disquiet, I was enraptured by the style, infatuated by the thoughts, but annoyed that he didn't choose to develop any of his material for more than a few pages. I think that Pessoa is a great literary figure in spite of that garbage.

And narrating the Comedy in first person and having Virgil as his guide was an obvious gimmick as well. Modeling his epic after Homer and using a model used for oral tradition was Virgil obvious gimmick. Sometimes I feel annoyed with the dismissal of a few works with the notion that they are gimmicks, as if the idea (I will use Heteronyms) is judged by its originally and not by the application of the idea. Yeah, it is obvious. Any cleaver guy would think : hey, we write with fake names. If I give personality to the fake names, it will be cool. Yeah, beavis, so what? I will give them also distinct voice, because the main search of modernity was the voice of the author. They are not going to be just other names, they are going to be other guys. And not just one. Instead of writing a novel, I will suggest the novel of a literary circle. Hey, that is obvious. But who could do it with the efficiety of Pessoa and actually find a aesthetical reason to do it? The heteronyms, because their story is also literature, since Pessoa wrote their lifes, influences, ties, is an allegory study of moderm poetry. Few can beat it and this means Eliot as well.
Of course, Pessoa was mentally ill, so that could have helped. Reading his letters to his fiance one would discover that the major instigator of the break up of the couple was one of his heteronyms (Ricardo Reis if I recall well), who didnt liked the girl. So maybe you may dismiss his work as a work of madman, not an artist. :D


Still, I'd like to withhold final judgement until we know all the stuff Pessoa actually wrote. It's a fine thing to say that Pessoa is better than Eliot, but what poems are you basing that opinion on? Did he write anything better than The Wasteland? Not that I've seen. His innovations and style and what not are impressive but I feel that great poets need to write truly great poems.

Here came again our notion that great poems means lots of pages. Even if it is strange (in your list of books to be save from fire, you argue that Wasteland is not top 20 because no much can be done with so few pages, yet Ancient Mariner is there, not a bigger poem) this obssession. A bit of Ahab, and with this you seem to dismiss all authors which greatness is spread up in several works, in his style, etc. You just throw in the cinders Emily Dickinson or Jorge Luis Borges because they had strong aesthetical reasons to not write longer than a sit. That seems to be reason why you prefer Eliot over Yeats also.



From where we stand right now, Pessoa is at the stage of his posterity that Hopkins was in the 1920s. There's all this speculation about lost treasure and steamer trunks. Everybody imagines that he's got something amazing just tucked away and in a few years we're going to have another Lusiad or something. I say, let's take it slow, judge his poems as they come out, and then give them time to settle into the canon and find their place.


The big problem is if Pessoa have something more amazing locked, then it is not just Camoes but Shakespeare and Dante that need to be worried. Because there is already a enormous bulk of material published, it is not just a few poems, but thousands and thousands of page. I really doubt Eliot for example have as much material as Pessoa, so you have already enough material for a judgment and this material is already amazing. Inside the portuguese literature he is already replacing Camoes as main figure (Because Pessoa also wrote to defy Camoes lyrics and managed it quite well). If the hidden treasure (the recent published stuff of Pessoa are more prose than poetry, seems like the discovery of Pessoa is now a discovery of Pessoa prose) is lost, Pessoa have already enough material to make me risk the prophecy of a major change definitive change in the portuguese canon.

[JCamilo]

Perhaps, but if Yeats called himself the last, then he must have had a sense that Romanticism was exhausted. It happens. Modernist poetics burned itself out into the weakness of confessional poetics, and in the US, the Beat movement probably started its death throes shortly before Ginsberg passed away.

Yes, Yeats was a poet of decadency. He was not a living romantic guy like Byron set himself. But the point is that he didnt saw himself as a transition, like nobody would do, but a conclusion. Which is more than natural.


Again, I do get a sense of strength ebbing away in Yeats, from the small selection of his work which I know well, but I can see why mortalterror is conflicted in his sentiments. Yeats has a muscular grandiosity that thunders along, whereas Eliot takes a sledge hammer to the lost world order and declares it to be anesthetized.

I do not think there is much internal conflict for Mortalterror. I may be wrong, but to me his original question was already answered by himself.


I cannot really speak to your neck of the woods JCam; I have some Paz in translation lying about, and some Spanish speaking poets contemporaneous to me from various small presses, but I have no confidence to assess, as I am not that well read in both Spanish and Latin poets.

I am not that familiar with Paz, just his travel diary to india and his works with Basho and Haiku. But I must confess, I have a some irrational prejudice against spanish... it is not as fluid as english and not as precise as portuguese... it such baroque language. I almost hear myself complaning like Borges did about being Cervantes and not Quevedo the definitive author of spanish language. :D
Anyways, I would risk some of the spanish poets, maybe if you have any work in english-spanish version. Afterwhile you get the vocabulary, some guys (Neruda, Borges, Cortazar, Ruben Dario) are worth to read in the original. Haven't see any english translation (poetry or prose) that lives up the original, exacly because the way the bent spanish for their purpose.

[stlukesguild]

No disagreement about Neruda, in the end being a better poet than Borges, at least a more lively voice. The only thing is that Borges domains so much the scenario in Latin America (plus Neruda and Borges feud is the history of latin america poetry and Borges ended with the last word...

No disagreement about Borges, here. I am essentially a Borgesian. Asked to name my favorite writer of the latter 20th century I would not hesitate a second. Asked to name my favorite writer of the entire 20th century I might give a second's pause to consider Proust, Kafka, and perhaps even Calvino... but almost assuredly I'd go with Borges. I agree that the Borges/Neruda feud may have undermined a good portion of Neruda's centrality... especially when one considers that Borges was far more accurate in questioning Latin American (Argentine) support of the Nazis, antisemitism, and the abuses of Stalin. The Aleph pretty much places the feud in a brilliant comic mode from which Neruda cannot respond.

Portuguese and mostly brazilian literature have really a record of non-translation that is unexplainable. Ok, portuguese demands much from translator, specially when translated to english, but Drummond or Guimaraes Rosa (or Machado de Assis in the last century) are not dwarfs in this field and I noticed for what it seems there is no printing of their translations.

I assume that translation... good translations... demand a decent number of writers having chosen to master a language. The languages that are chosen commonly relate to the cultural and economic centrality of the nation in question. Chinese and Arabic are undoubtedly growing in importance. I think Portuguese will grow in importance here when and if ties and trade become more important to the US. Spanish, however, is continually translated into English (not merely Cervantes and Borges, but Garcia-Lorca, Hernandez, Machado, Jimenez, Alberti, Guillen, Unamuno, Vallejo, Cortazar, Paz, Fuentes, etc... and certainly this owes much to the connection of many American artists and writers to Spanish Modernism and the Spanish revolution as well as to our border with Mexico and our increasing Hispanic population (now numbering as the largest minority. Such is an unfortunate reality and a major reason for the recognition of Latin-American writers who write in Spanish as opposed to Portuguese. I should note that there has been a recent acclaimed translation of The Lusiads and amazingly enough... a volume of Camoes' sonnets. There are also several translations available of Machado de Assis available.

[JCamilo]

Also Brazil is pretty much turning the tables in South America, it is very possible that we assume a more effective leading here, it will certainly give some impulse to raise the interest for brazilian literature.
Spain have also Quixote. Not only is the "key" romance that everyone knows but also a symbolic character that can carry on his shoulders the entire language. Portuguese have Lusiadas, as amazing as it is, it is one more epic, not a key epic, and unlike for example Milton and his Satan, there is not an universal character to represent portuguese literature. But really, the raising political-economical importance of Brazil may be lost if good names do not write texts worth of representing us now. Also, Brazil is not a literary country. It is more devoted to music, and in this field we managed to produce more international references, such as Bossa Nova. Meanwhile, Argentina is heavily dedicated to literature, when Borges started to write they had as much libraries as London.

Now, Borges and Neruda. Have you read the anedote of their last meeting (told by Borges): it was early 70's, they have meet each other. Both said some words but too carefull to not give an opening to the other. Then they start to talk about language. Then about how bad spanish language is. That it was useless for poetry and it was a waste not writing only in english. So, in the end they both agreed that from now they would not write a single line in spanish, only in english, shaked hands and went home.

[JBI]

Eliot catches my mind and keeps it frozen, whereas Yeats in fact frees it. Eliot's complexity and its unavoidable randomness provide his poetry with that halo of greatness which, however, restricts enjoyment. His mind arises as an arrogant figure of creation and punishes the lack of intellectual attention with an ever-growing confussion. Yeats, contrarily, shares the process of building taking you by the hand and, with no need of explanation to his never simple meanings, makes you feel the mystery of his words.

On one hand Yeats's poetry reaches and moves you more inevitably: his poems approach step by step, and softly claim an effect. Eliot's lines struggle to even whisper in your ear when they are already making your brain feel sore. If I must select a favourite, which is never calling either 'the best'! I must select the Irish man; his poetry touches, for me, more instantaneously and gladly.

I'm of the mind that Eliot's reference don't really make him difficult - anyone who studies the Waste Land learns them quickly enough - the difficulty is realizing that Eliot has forever changed the work he references - one cannot, if they really read the Waste Land, go back to, lets say, The Tempest, and approach it again the same way - Likewise, The Unreal City changes the perspective on the urban world in a way that, for instance, Yeats' Isle of Innisfree could really do. There is a power there, and it isn't mere difficulty -

Pound's fame perhaps comes from the difficulty, and the numerous references that even he quite often didn't understand. Eliot is doing something else - you can learn all the references in all of his poems, and it won't even begin to change the difficulty.

That being said, he isn't that difficult a poet up until The Waste Land, and even then, was never as difficult as Donne for example. His thought has, essentially been absorbed, so I don't think there is that difficulty - in truth Wallace Stevens to me seems far more difficult, as does even Robert Browning, whose references are far more difficult than Eliot's as he didn't even put a foot note (how many people actually get the reference to, for instance, Galuppi, or Fra Lipo Lipi?

[Virgil]

well, I would say that there is no such thing as transitional musician, poet, singer, etc. While you are producing you are the conclusion of everything and I doubt anyone ever saw themselves as a bridge between a past fellow and a future fellow they are not aware.
Thus, it is more of that thing, we re-write the past, transform people as transitional exactly because it usually means someone who is starting the job for a great one who finished it.


I definitely agree. Transitional is for critics who have to catagorize. No poet or musician or artist thinks when he writes he is in a era. He writes to the best of his ability in the manner where his art is both original and fresh on the one hand and based on a tradition on the other.

[JBI]

I definitely agree. Transitional is for critics who have to catagorize. No poet or musician or artist thinks when he writes he is in a era. He writes to the best of his ability in the manner where his art is both original and fresh on the one hand and based on a tradition on the other.

I'd disagree - plenty believe themselves as in an era - certainly renaissance writers, for instance, thought so - even Petrarch who was essentially the pioneer tried to establish a movement away from what he called the "Dark Ages", and what we now call medieval times. I think Yeats had a consciousness. Of course, Symbolism was coined in the 1890s by an English man, but under the guide of Yeats himself, who told Symons what to call the movement.

I think now more then ever there is, especially in American verse, a desire to go behind a flag. Generally that comes around a periodical, and quite often is a sales gimmick, but I suspect more writers thing of themsleves in a context of a movement.

Of course, those are probably the more mediocre one, unless the movement is giant, but it wasn't the critics who defined Naturalism keep in mind, it was Zola himself.

[Jozanny]

I think now more then ever there is, especially in American verse, a desire to go behind a flag.

Not in my universe JBI, not my contemporaries. Susan Wheeler enlarges Frost through tribute to him, but that is not ad hoc patriotism. Not my colleagues Al Maginnes (http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2009/04/al-maginnes.html) or Robert Thomas. Certainly not Linda Bierds ( http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1551) who I would classify as a neo-Romanticist, but that is common of western poets, and definitely not Kay Ryan, the current laureate. I can rattle off more examples if you like.

[JBI]

Not in my universe JBI, not my contemporaries. Susan Wheeler enlarges Frost through tribute to him, but that is not ad hoc patriotism. Not my colleagues Al Maginnes (http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2009/04/al-maginnes.html) or Robert Thomas. Certainly not Linda Bierds ( http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1551) who I would classify as a neo-Romanticist, but that is common of western poets, and definitely not Kay Ryan, the current laureate. I can rattle off more examples if you like.
Thing of all the "Groups" "Generations" "Movements" and other things - Beat Poets, Black Mountain, New-formalist, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, New York School, Objectivists, etc. etc. Even in the old days, Imagism was hardly lacking structure as a movement - pound even put out a volume of it under a periodical of that title, and Hilda Doolittle fashioned herself "H. D. Imagist".

Of course, there aren't many good examples of poets who fall into these categories, but the categories do exist, nonetheless.

[Virgil]

I think now more then ever there is, especially in American verse, a desire to go behind a flag.

Where did you get that? I get Poetry Magazine which puts out contemporary poets and I haven't seen that at all. For such a claim, please name the poets and their poems? If anything the cultural movement is what I call self-hating American criticalness.

[stlukesguild]

...how many people actually get the reference to, for instance, Galuppi, or Fra Lipo Lipi?

Uh... that would be me.:D By the way... I could never stand the Victorian Anglicizations of painters: John Bellini rather than Giovanni. Albert Dürer rather than Albrecht, Fra Lippo Lippi rather than the full Fra Fillipo Lippi, and Titian (which has remained the common name for Tiziano Vecellio.

[Dr. Hill]

I'm a fan of TS Eliot, but I'm not so well-versed with Yeats, so I will read a bit of him to make my vote.

[Jozanny]

JBI, sorry, I don't see the connection between schools and jingoism, I really don't. English poets, to my mind, toot England's horn more frequently, and the language poets died a really quick death.

To the extent that I am wasting so much time on this network, I kind of do what you do, always half-writing a thesis out loud if it really interests me (and the Spillane thread in GL is actually turning my gears that maybe I want to put a noir-idea in my file), but you've lost me on this, however justified your intellectual hostility to Americana. I may be weary of spinning my wheels on the romantics and the modernists and the same old same old, but I know contemporary American poetry. It doesn't wave the flag, and isn't as self-hating as Virgil appears to perceive.

[JBI]

JBI, sorry, I don't see the connection between schools and jingoism, I really don't. English poets, to my mind, toot England's horn more frequently, and the language poets died a really quick death.

To the extent that I am wasting so much time on this network, I kind of do what you do, always half-writing a thesis out loud if it really interests me (and the Spillane thread in GL is actually turning my gears that maybe I want to put a noir-idea in my file), but you've lost me on this, however justified your intellectual hostility to Americana. I may be weary of spinning my wheels on the romantics and the modernists and the same old same old, but I know contemporary American poetry. It doesn't wave the flag, and isn't as self-hating as Virgil appears to perceive.

I didn't say anything about jingoism did I? I just said that's how American poetry seems to function - probably because the U.S. has such a large population, and centering around a movement and periodical probably helps get one exposure - plus there is a great deal of regionalism, so perhaps the periodical and its writers function better as a group based on geography.


Canadian poetry, in contrast, either seems ethnically divided - with periodicals of Asian-North American, or Canadians of African descent, or Jewish Verse, or French verse being the divider, or simply isn't. I don't think, for instance, we have the same regionalism, because our population is too sparse to support such a distinction - poets here seem more scattered, and it seems that, rather than the periodical, the chapbook or the small-press volume is the way poetry is really introduced. Though, there is perhaps a connection between poet and institution, though many of the great poets are affiliated in one way or another with a specific university.

[quasimodo1]

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