By: Kimberley Lynne

Kimberley Lynne — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:30:01 +0000

Yes, if only Yeats had Tweeted . . . Many interpretations of his gravestone self-epitaph, part of one of his last poems, Under Ben Bulben, argue what “cold eye” on life and death can mean. He’s no doubt wrestling with his temporality, was ill, cranky and close to the end. William F. Buckley thought Yeats was referring to how Medieval gatekeepers checked people for plague, but in reading Ben Bulben, I was struck how WBY again references his Sligo connections (“an ancestor was a rector” in the Drumcliff churchyard) and how he seems to want to lie in a place where he belonged. I was also reminded of the folklore story he chronicled of the salmon Michael who evades death and then longs for it. I hope WBY had reached a place where he could consider the exit from his body with a cool distance: go ahead, horseman death, do your best, I have lived.

By: Doug Cumming

Doug Cumming — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 04:52:28 +0000

If only Yeats had been forced to compress his meaning into 140 characters. Well, there’s the gravestone epitaph I hope we’ll see in Drumcliff churchyard this weekend. Nice compression, but what does casting a cold eye mean?

Comments on: Only 137 Wild Bees

By: Kimberley Lynne

By: Doug Cumming