In Memory of W.B. Yeats Analysis

This poem is all about free styling. No, wait. It's actually all about unrhymed hexameter. Or, um, maybe rhyming couplets?OK, we're just messing with you. Our poet is just really ambitious. You've...

Quite frankly, our speaker has a whole lot in common with the poet himself. (Auden, we mean, not Yeats.) Like Auden, our speaker is very invested in Yeats's poetry. Like Auden, he's a little bit sk...

Technically, Yeats died in a hospital. We know this because, well, the first section spends a good bit of time talking about the mundane details of dying in a hospital. But that's really the borin...

Remember how you used to write those love letters to that cute girl (or guy) who sat across from you in fifth grade? (Don't worry, we won't tell.) It probably took you at least seventeen drafts be...

Well, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" is about as traditional as an elegiac title can be (and this is an elegy, a poem written in memory of a deceased person). It brings to mind another uber-famous (and...

Rhyming? No problem. Perfect metrical patterns? Check. Free-wheelin', easy-on-the-tongue formlessness? Got that, too. In case you were wondering, Auden was a master of form. Yeats had that market...

To make this poem easy, you only need to know two key things: 1) William Butler Yeats was a super-amazing poet; and 2), there's a long tradition of writing poems (called elegies) about famous dead...

Auden was close friends with Tolkien (of Lord of the Rings fame). He was a big fan of the little folk as well. Read what he had to say about Frodo Baggins in the New York Times review of Lord of...

C'mon, folks, have some respect for the dead! OK, Yeats did indeed have a pretty intense love life, and we do hear about the parishes of pretty women that surround him. But that's another story for...

William Butler Yeats (title, 44, the whole poem, really)The Irish Independence Movement (35-36)The build-up to World War II (47-50)