A Coat

I've read five W. B. Yeats poems tonight and, It is strange to say but, I don’t believe Mr. Yeats’ poetry can be fully understood for at least a century. I believe he made use of poetic devices beyond the current intellectual boundaries of literature. It’s not stylistic, it’s graphed on a different grid and can only be partially appreciated by what can be plotted in ours. I find it jarring that for all my schooling, no instructor read us Yeats. Maybe this is one reason why but, how I wish they had! I see a lack in my life.

This is actually in response to an argument between Yeats and George Moore who accused Yeats of being a poser and pretending that he was from a higher social order than he really was. So this is Yeats saying he doesn\'t care about his outward appearance and status, he is sloughing it all off, ridding himself of his coat.

I think he's talking about one's persona, protective outer personality. But then people can take it, leaving the person exposed. So I guess he's then saying, screw it, better to be yourself, be naked and be comfortable with it.

Pruchnicki - how could anyone “take Yeats’ songs as their own”? You don’t make sense old chap. As for “naked” - if it means anything, it does not mean what you say it does. I cannot see Yeats “dissing” (do you have that word?) his early poetry as bad and dishonest, which is what you are suggesting. He says there is more enterprise in walking naked, which is something else. But what it is he does not say. It could mean he will write no more poetry (after all, the contemporary reader reading this poem, was not to know of what was to come.) .

The sharp point of difference between the elevated mind of a poet and the materialistic people is poignantly presented.

poem of deep invocation

Poem sounds like Yeats laments an epic song he wrote, filled with metaphors and allusion, misused.

wtheck- what is with the ads? ? ?

To try to interpret another’s work is useful only as a practice. The artist can never truly understand his or her own work, if truly art. We can learn more about a person, hypothetically, by studying their physical nakedness. From art we learn more about ourselves than we could ever know about another soul.