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Take Your Poet to Work: W. B. Yeats

By Will Willingham 20 Comments

What if you could take your favorite poet to work with you? Imagine having a bard in your back pocket when you climb a ladder to shingle a roof. Or taking a poet with you when you check your crops, to see if the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye. We can’t wait to see what our favorite poets will be doing in your workplaces next month.

Take Your Poet to Work Day is coming July 16

To help you play and celebrate with us, we’re releasing poets each week in a compact, convenient format you can tuck in your pocket, tool belt, or lunchbox. Last year, we gave you Sara Teasdale,  Pablo Neruda,  T. S. Eliot,  Rumi,  Edgar Allan Poe,  and the reclusive Emily Dickinson (for folks who work at home). We even released a full collection,  The Haiku Masters: Matsuo Basho, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.

This year, we’re building on the collection, adding one new poet each Wednesday, up until the big day. We started the celebration over the past few weeks with Langston Hughes,  Adrienne Rich and John Keats. Today, add one of the finest poets of the 20th century, Irish poet William Butler Yeats.

Take Your Poet to Work: W.B. Yeats

Take Your Poet to Work Day - WB Yeats

 

Click here for a downloadable version of  Take Your Poet to Work Day Printable – W.B. Yeats that you can print, and color and cut out for the big day.

William Butler Yeats

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.

William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 in Dublin into a family of the Protestant Anglo-Irish landowning class. He lived in Dublin and London during his growing up years. He was very much affected by the politics of the time, as he was a young adult when the protestant minority in power began to be displaced by the predominantly Catholic nationalist movement.

Yeats studied law for a time but eventually moved to London to study art. He was an accomplished playwright, and a founder of the Irish Theatre which was later to become the Abbey Theatre. While he is better known for his poetry, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 more for his theatrical works than his verse. He was the first Irishman to be awarded the prize.

His first collection of poems was published in 1889, and there is strong evidence of the influence of Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Later, his poetry became more rooted in realism and the physical, with influence of Ezra Pound and William Blake apparent. Common themes in his poetry include mysticism, spiritualism, the occult and Irish identity and nationalism.

Yeats was appointed to the Irish senate in 1922. He was married, but had an ongoing relationship of sorts with a former love, Irish activist and revolutionary Maud Gonne. Known as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, Yeats died in 1939.

When You Are Old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

 

The Living Beauty

I’ll say and maybe dream I have drawn content—
Seeing that time has frozen up the blood,
The wick of youth being burned and the oil spent—
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, but when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than ‘twere an apparition. O heart, we are old,
The living beauty is for younger men,
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

 

Learn more about Take Your Poet to Work Day and our featured poets

Check out our Poetry at Work Day Infographic and help spread the word

Learn more about W. B. Yeats

Post and illustrations by LW Lindquist.

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Will Willingham
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Will Willingham
Director of Many Things; Senior Editor, Designer and Illustrator at Tweetspeak Poetry
I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel is Adjustments.
Will Willingham
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Filed Under: love poems, love poetry, Poems, Poets, Take Your Poet to Work Day, W. B. Yeats

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About Will Willingham

I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel is Adjustments.

Comments

  1. L. L. Barkat says

    June 25, 2014 at 8:18 am

    Love the corn field! 🙂

    Reply
  2. Maureen Doallas says

    June 25, 2014 at 9:16 am

    Imagine Yeats and the others around the dinner table, all at the same time!

    Reply
  3. Monica Sharman says

    June 25, 2014 at 3:05 pm

    Really appreciate these drawings. You capture so much character and expression with minimal lines. Like poetry.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Take Your Poet to Work: Sylvia Plath | says:
    July 9, 2014 at 8:02 am

    […] the celebration over the past few weeks with Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich,  John Keats, William Butler Yeats, and Christina Rossetti. Today, we introduce a 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply
  2. Take Your Poet to Work: William Shakespeare - says:
    June 3, 2015 at 8:46 am

    […] and Kobayashi Issa. And last year, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich,  John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply
  3. Take Your Poet to Work: William Wordsworth - says:
    June 9, 2016 at 8:01 am

    […] Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. In 2014, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich,  John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet,Sylvia Plath. And last year, we […]

    Reply
  4. Take Your Poet to Work: Elizabeth Barrett Browning - says:
    June 20, 2016 at 12:45 pm

    […] Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. In 2014, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich,  John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia Plath. And last year, we […]

    Reply
  5. Take Your Poet to Work: Emily Brontë - says:
    June 29, 2016 at 8:01 am

    […] Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. In 2014, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich,  John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia Plath. And last year, we […]

    Reply
  6. Take Your Poet to Work: Judith Wright - says:
    July 6, 2016 at 8:01 am

    […] Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. In 2014, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich,  John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia Plath. And last year, we […]

    Reply
  7. Take Your Poet to Work: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - says:
    July 13, 2016 at 8:01 am

    […] Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. In 2014, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich,  John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia Plath. And last year, we […]

    Reply
  8. Take Your Poet to Work Day: On Location - says:
    July 20, 2016 at 1:10 pm

    […] wouldn’t you know it, Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Edgar Allan Poe and William Butler Yeats came over to my home state and made an appearance at Mount […]

    Reply
  9. National Poetry Month Dare: Commit 'The Stolen Child' by W. B. Yeats - says:
    April 5, 2017 at 8:01 am

    […] 1896, Irish Monthly published William Yeats’ “The Stolen Child,” a poem which, along with Yeats’ books Fairy and Folk Tales […]

    Reply
  10. Bring in the Cupcakes! It's Take Your Poet to School Week - says:
    April 2, 2018 at 7:25 am

    […] Neruda The Haiku Masters Edgar Allan Poe T.S. Eliot Rumi Emily Dickinson John Keats Adrienne Rich W.B. Yeats Langston Hughes Sylvia Plath Christina Rossetti Walt Whitman William Shakespeare Maya Angelou […]

    Reply
  11. Top 10 Totally Fun Teaching Ideas for National Poetry Month - says:
    April 11, 2018 at 8:01 am

    […] Neruda The Haiku Masters Edgar Allan Poe T.S. Eliot Rumi Emily Dickinson John Keats Adrienne Rich W.B. Yeats Langston Hughes Sylvia Plath Christina Rossetti Walt Whitman William Shakespeare Maya Angelou […]

    Reply
  12. Take Your Poet to Work Day: Jorge Luis Borges - says:
    July 4, 2018 at 8:01 am

    […] 2014, we added Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, John Keats, William Butler Yeats, Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply
  13. Take Your Poet to Work Day: Juana Inés de la Cruz - says:
    July 11, 2018 at 8:00 am

    […] 2014, we added Langston Hughes,  Adrienne Rich,  John Keats,  William Butler Yeats,  Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply
  14. Take Your Poet to Work Day: Rosario Castellanos - says:
    July 12, 2018 at 8:43 am

    […] 2014, we added Langston Hughes,  Adrienne Rich,  John Keats,  William Butler Yeats,  Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply
  15. Take Your Poet to Work Day: C. D. Wright | says:
    June 19, 2019 at 5:02 am

    […] 2014, we added Langston Hughes,  Adrienne Rich,  John Keats,  William Butler Yeats,  Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply
  16. Take Your Poet to Work Day: Mary Oliver | says:
    July 4, 2019 at 2:58 pm

    […] 2014, we added Langston Hughes,  Adrienne Rich,  John Keats,  William Butler Yeats,  Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply
  17. Take Your Poet to Work Day: W. S. Merwin | says:
    September 11, 2019 at 7:57 pm

    […] 2014, we added Langston Hughes,  Adrienne Rich,  John Keats,  William Butler Yeats,  Christina Rossetti and the beloved 20th-century American poet, Sylvia […]

    Reply

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