William Butler Yeats - The Lake Isle of Innisfree

[malutka112]

This is read by Ezra Pound. I have readings of his Cantos. This is definitely that poet's voice. It's very characteristic.

[Littlecrake]

Thought proving, lovely imagery but hey Willie ya think you were reading from a horror movie script or the obituary pages!

[colinrabun]

i don't think you knew him well enough to call him willie.

[stevejobsaccount]

@Littlecrake

Troll post

[toReasonWhy]

@Littlecrake

Haha true, but that's the prosody every poet used then and even 50 years plus or minus. Listen to clips of Eliot, Pound, Whitman, any of them, they have individual idiosyncrasies but generally they shared the heavy melancholic, surging, annunciatory reading method.

[XxXSizzlershitXxX]

Most defiently the best spoken version of the best irish poem ever.Possibly the best line of a poem ''I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore'' is the best line in any poetry ever written

[NoRosesForMe]

He's the best. I still keep my old book of Yeats poems around. One of the few things from my childhood that meant so much.

Few others stay so close.

[Marte1618]

An Exceprt (last stanza) from Easter 1916 To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse - MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. An FYI about Innis Free, Yeats wrote it while staying in London, cut off from his beloved country...only the thought of a cottage of wattle daub and linnet green sustained

[Marte1618]

Willy, as well as being a brilliant poet, was a known an valued playright as well. During the time before the 1916 Rising, he stage a play, "Cathleen Ní Houlihan" at the Abbey Theatre. If you ever have the chance to read this...read it from your heart, you will understnad the man who wrote those words. While William Butler Gates did not support violence uo to 1916 Rising, he did indeed regret his choice. You will find his thoughts in a poem called simply Easter 1916...the stanza will follow

[Marte1618]

William Butler Yeats is my favourite Irish poet, followed closely by Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett.

Willy's accent acme from the caste system in Ireland, You had the English who were upper-class, then everyone else. However, over the years some families, by fortune or design managed to rise to the ascendancy. Yes they were still (sniff, nose pointing in the air) Irish, but at least they knew their betters and tried to emulate them. to be continuedd

[FISHMYMAN]

he also spent his childhood in Ingerland, slough i think

[caramele1]

I did my english term paper on gyres and Yeats, it was a real drag. All that is so wierd and complicated! It got me pretty obsessed with all his nonsense sayings at first, but in the end I was glad to get a 96%!

[Hamster3107]

yeats wanted his poems to be an art form in themselves, o he almost sings them...thats why he sounds pretentious, alhough his accent was lke that anyway!

[sillykidssong]

nice job

[louisalit]

This is one of my absolute favorite poems. I was very disappointed at his reading, though.(Think I would have done it much better myself!) The Swedish translation of the poem, which I have, is also very beautiful

[skanemermaid]

Re: Yeats's accent

(1) He's reading a poem, and so probably is modulating his voice for the occasion. (Listen to an RTE newsreader's accent to get an idea of how even strong regional accents (Donegal) can be shifted to suit a more 'formal' speech register.

(2) Accents a bit with time. (There's even a new D4 accent in Dublin now, that came around the same time as the Celtic Tiger).

(3) For what it's worse, I swear I can hear a trace of a Galway accent on certain consonants - got from Lady G?

[johnfinbarburke]

eat ur heart out tony blair

[AuburnGradAuburnMom]

If you have ever listened to a marsh in the evening, and heard the whippoorwills, crickets, and the droning of bullfrogs as

their sing their nightly serenade, you have been to Innisfree. Life is simple there;the colors of the evening and day skies touch deep into the heart and take with them all that ails the soul.

[AuburnGradAuburnMom]

The 'Lake Isle of Innisfree' is my favorite poem of all time. "I hear it in the deep heart's core." The poem reflects what I have always felt, a yearning for peacefulness. Yeats has a constant longing for the tranqulity of the lake, of a "bee-loud glade" or a glimpse of the "linnet's wing". Peace, sweet peace and he knows exactly where to go to find peace. He hears it even when he's standing in a bustling town. Yeats himself said that this poem was influenced by Henry David Thoreau's 'Walden'.

[bafr1]

nice one

[roadtorinpoche]

I think the confusion in regards to his accent lies in the fact that he read this poem, in particular, in verse. He refused to read in prose style as he had worked so hard to get it into verse in the first place. So, the fact that the last parts of the lines do not drop off in tone may make him sound as though he has less of the (lovely) Irish sing-song to his accent.

[UISTMAN59]

I think the style of reading is very similar to that of Sorley MacLean, the graet scottish Gaelic poet. Interesting

[rrrorkk]

In response to some earlier comments yeats accent is more of an educated Irish accent rather than a british one. Not every Irish person says begorrah and top o the mornin to ye, in fact none of them do.

[19091934]

Het is mooi om de stem van de dichter te horen, maar wat die illustraties hierbij te maken hebben snap ik niet.

[Panini6Pedant]

It was many years that I first heard that it is a strange experience to hear Yeats reading his own poetry. Now, I find that it is strange, yes, but also fascinating, even inspiring. Thanks for the experience!

[OmegaRed9]

Thank you, I totally agree. Poetry is something that is meant to be heard and it is unfortunate that most poetry is never read by the author, so we need to revel in what little recordings we actually have.

[seraphimsigrist]

the reading is grand

the images do not seem to be the

ones wanted for this poem belonging

more to the michael robartes poems or

something.

[OmegaRed9]

I wanted to point out his spiritualistic imagery which is why I use the gyres so much. I also wanted to point out some of his eastern influence, hence the ying-yang.

[seraphimsigrist]

kinda think it might work better with

another of the poems?

but hey! cant go wrong

no blame in dictum of i ching

[falloutgurls]

STANZA 3:-

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey.

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

[DCBadger]

Interesting, after hearing this I asked around, and is the reason for him having more of an official and british accent that the higher class folks in Ireland, in his time, spoke in a british accent?

Or is it just because he was raised in london for a little bit of his childhood?

By the way, thanks a lot, this is really cool.

[OmegaRed9]

Well, as is with most Irish poets, there is always the question of what language they should write in. Many choose to write in regional Celtic dialects to try and maintain a sense of national pride. Yeats on the other hand wrote in English arguing that the Irish now own the English language and are its new masters.

[DCBadger]

Yes, I've heard that before, but it was posited as more of a quip by Yeats, less of a full on argument. But what I meant above was, why does he perform this reading here with an upper class British accent... was it the formal means which contemporary poets chose, was it his personal choice, or was it his actual accent obtained by living in Britain for a bit? Any experts on accents in the first half of the 19th century?

[lars3939]

emm thats not an upper class "british" accent, thats a fairly orthodox irish accent

[DCBadger]

Yeah, I don't know what I was smoking when I heard this before and thought British. Thanks, though.