"The Song of the Wandering Aengus" by W.B Yeats

A Reading of Yeats' poem about a fish that turns into a girl then is hard to find.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Wandering
• Aengus
• Golden
• Apples
• Yeats

[thissong4you]

I thoroughly enjoyed this and your more recent reading of this lovely, lyrical poem. I also enjoyed your discussion with dvidcl. You say you've heard Yeats read and would not want to read like that, yet you do a marvelous job of immitating him in your beautiful reading of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."

[chitchenshi]

My favorite Yeats poem, though I realize it's one of his early ones. Thanks for the read, which captures a certain world-weary sadness.

[SpokenVerse]

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" in the Video Responses above is me imitating Yeats' manner of reading.

Also I recorded this poem again, but I doubt there's much difference.

Many poets and famous actors are tone-deaf and can't sing. Maybe being unable to appreciate music makes them more acute to speech rhythms and timing.

I have no appreciation of music myself: I never listen to it and can't sing. I'm liable to stand to attention and salute when the band plays "Pop goes the Weasel".

[dvidcyl]

Me? A crack at it? I doubt it would come off very well. Now I could say, "I very much like your rendition or perhaps I don't like it so much," but that wouldn't be at all helpful. Or I could say "let your own discretion be your tutor." but those words are not mine.

It's a performing art. One has to be faithful to one's conception of the work as manifest through one's own talents. Yeats' perspective is interesting, decidedly musical, but then, by his own account, he was tone deaf.

[SpokenVerse]

You're a evasive long-winded feller, sure enough.

As I said I've heard Yeats read and I wouldn't want to read like that. I don't think many people would.

Why don't you be taking a crack at it?

[dvidcyl]

What I think somewhat unformulated and much less important than what Yeats thinks and the way Yeats reads. One can listen to his own recordings of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "The Fiddler of Dooney" on YouTube. There is a uniquely musical rhythm and phrasing in his recitation almost as if you could see him waving his hand as he conducts a musical performance. "The Song of the Wandering Aengus" is roughly contemporary with the two poems mentioned above.

[SpokenVerse]

Is this just a general information service you're providing? Why don't you tell them what you think?

[dvidcyl]

Not a point so much as to help make other people generally aware of this, Yeats' own rather emphatic directive about how to read his poetry, so that they might come to their own conclusions about any particular reading within the context of the poet's intent.

[SpokenVerse]

I remember him saying it too and I've heard him read. Are you making a point?

[dvidcyl]

"I'm going to read my poems with great emphasis on their rhythm. And that may seem strange if you are not used to it. I remember the great English poet, William Morris, coming in a rage out of some lecture hall where somebody had recited a passage . . . of his. It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble to get that thing into verse. It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble to get into verse the poems that I am going to read. That is why I will not read them as if they were prose." W.B. YEATS