Poet And Mohel Poem by gershon hepner

Poetry is born out of the quarrel with oneself,
said William Butler Yeats, but though it’s hit or miss
once it has been born no one should put it on the shelf
without considering that it may need a bris,
removing parts that don’t shed light upon the quarrel,
for brevity is of the poet’s wit the soul,
and redundant words like foreskin so immoral
that poets ought to practice no less than a mohel.

Richard Eder reviews R. F. Foster’s “W. B. Yeats: A Life: II: The Arch Poet,1915-1939” (Oxford University Press) in “Near-Perfect Poems, Imperfect Poet, ” NYT, December 4,2004.

William Butler Yeats made such charged and explicit use of his life, his passions, his philosophical searchings, his country and causes, and even his failings — no major poet of our time has done it so passionately and few have ever done it — that a biography could just about be constructed out of quotations. So, almost, could the review of a biography. Starting, famously enough, with 'How can we know the dancer from the dance? ' Or less famously, with Yeats's remark that 'poetry is born out of the quarrel with oneself.'
That quarrel is great and petty by turns. And sometimes it seems conducted with an eye to what it will engender. ('You think it horrible that Lust and Rage/ Should dance attendance upon my old age..../ What else have I to spur me into song? ') The poetry, at all events, is far greater, particularly over the period covered by this second part of R. F. Foster's biography.


12/4/03