The Winding Stair And Other Poems - 1791 Words

As Professor Pethica points out, the volume The Winding Stair and Other Poems is extraordinary because â€Å"its textual history is particularly elaborate, even by Yeats’s standards.† Although I would love to explore the relationship between different editions, as we did when we talked about different editions of Wilde Swans at Coole,† the task is too huge to be tackled sufficiently in this paper. In order to preclude any ambiguity, I would like to clarify that whenever I use the title The Winding Stair and Other Poems in this paper, unless otherwise specified, I am referring to the last edition published in 1933. Since the early stage of Yeats’s career, the poet has been concerned with mortality. The poet seems to suggest that art is the†¦show more content†¦Losing all touch with the finer consciousness of the age it would be, not only irresponsible, but anemic† (Foster, 441). In the poem â€Å"Three movements,† the poet observes that â€Å"Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land; / Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand; / What are all those fish that lie gasping on the strand?† (Finneran, 240) Yeats is neither detached Shakespearean fish, nor credulous Romantic fish; he is the fish that â€Å"lie gasping on the strand,† and the volume The Winding Stair and Other Poems is his struggle with the crisis of his age, both the age of the poet (nearly 70 at the time) and the age of the world (1930s). We have talked a lot about Yeats’s dialectical effort to transcend mortality and achieve immortality in his poetry. Such effort to transcend mortality presupposes the dichotomy between life and death. Indeed, in previous volumes, may concepts are contingent upon a symmetrically opposing idea: the symbol of the Mask presupposes the dichotomy between self and anti-self, and many of Yeats’s poems feature the dichotomy between female and male. However, in the volume The Winding S tair and Other Poems, Yeats points out a simple yet fundamental fact, that these dichotomies are all human constructs. In the poem â€Å"Vacillation,† the speaker solemnly observes that â€Å"Between extremities / Man runs his course† (Finneran, 250). The most important dichotomy that Yeats inspects in this volume is the one between life and death. The poet pointsShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of Zadie Smiths Swing Time1292 Words   |  6 Pageswithout much thought. In truth, though, the timeline was thoroughly considered by the author, and every jump or apparent gap in the book’s plot is intentional. While reading Swing Time, I perceived the narrator’s leaps through time as though she were winding a broken clock—the clock hands spun erratically around the clock face, seemingly choosing at random on which time it wished to land. 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Judge (2011) Organizational Behaviour 15th Edition New Jersey: Prentice Hall393164 Words   |  1573 PagesChristian Holdener, S4Carlisle Publishing Services Composition: S4Carlisle Publishing Services Printer/Binder: Courier/Kendallville Cover Printer: Courier/Kendalville Text Font: 10.5/12 ITC New Baskerville Std Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, in this textbook appear on the appropriate page within text. Copyright  © 2013, 2011, 2009, 2007, 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United