Stripping Down, Bearing All

One of my favorite Yeats poems is one of his shortest, a terse but tenacious declaration that he is taking his own poetry back. After years of writing nationalist anthems for the country he loved, anthologizing and eulogizing heroes, he grew tired of being "that poet." In 1916, Yeats started changing his views and ideologies, writing less romantically and taking on a more in-your-face and screw-the-world tone. Take my ideas, he says take all of my works and all of the times I tried to keep my country together and all of the things you thought my words meant. F-it. I'm a poet and I'm going to find something else. You can keep repeating my nationalist sentiments, singing them like songs, but I'm off to seek a higher power.

At least that's what I think he would say if we could have asked him about this, simply called "A Coat,” today’s featured poem. However, it would seem I’m not the only one who has thought a lot about this particular poem. Following the words of Yeats are a series of art sketches by Richard Diebenkom called “Etchings for Poems of W.B. Yeats." The first sketch in the 6-part series appears at the top of the post and the latter prints show the coat transformed into a divided Ireland.  Only in the magic of Yeats week would I find this lovely artist who was born in my native Oregon, but grew up in San Francisco and is probably one of a small group of people I would have wanted to meet if we lived at the same time. 

A Coat
W.B. Yeats

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But he fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,

For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.