Selected Poems
Selected Poems by William Butler Yeats, published by Penguin UK on May 25, 2000, is a comprehensive collection that showcases the evolution of one of the twentieth century’s most significant poets. This edition, edited by Timothy Webb, features a selection of Yeats’s work, including notable pieces from his narrative poem The Wanderings of Oisin and various lyrics that highlight his contributions as a poetic dramatist. The book spans 368 pages and is presented in English, allowing readers to explore Yeats’s passionate engagement with themes such as love, politics, and the Irish tradition.
Readers will find that this edition offers a unique perspective on Yeats’s creative process, presenting alternative versions of a dozen poems alongside significant variants. This approach allows for an intimate understanding of Yeats’s revisions and the complexities of his poetic journey. The inclusion of explanatory and textual notes for each poem further enriches the reading experience, making it accessible for those interested in poetry, literary criticism, and the historical context of Yeats’s work.
Official synopsis Publisher
W.B. Yeats’s Selected Poems is edited with an introduction and notes by Timothy Webb in Penguin Modern Classics.
Few have lived their ideas so passionately and nobly as W.B. Yeats in his love affairs, politics and poetry. From his youth in the 1880s, a fertile dreamer rediscovering and remaking the Irish tradition, he grew into a great and innovative poet of the twentieth century. This selection of Yeats’s work includes the final book from the unjustly neglected narrative poem The Wanderings of Oisin and a number of lyrics from Yeats’s work as poetic dramatist. This edition breaks new ground by allowing the reader to engage with a dozen poems in alternative versions; in many other cases it provides significant variants, so that Yeats’s struggle to revise his poetry can be experienced with unusual immediacy. It also includes explanatory and textual notes for each poem.
W B Yeats (1865-1939) was one of the great and innovative poets of the twentieth century. Much of his most vigorous verse on love, sex, Irish and international politics, the complexities of the occult and the ‘sedentary toil’ of poetry was produced in the years between his fiftieth birthday in 1915 and his death in 1939.
If you enjoyed Selected Poems, you might like The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, also available in Penguin Classics.
‘A compelling poetic presence … together with Joyce, Yeats made modern Irish poetry possible’
Timothy Webb
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