The Yeats Industry
Yeats belongs to the nation, nay, to mankind! The Irish sell more shamrocks with his fame. Scholars of all shades grub the world to find facts that mean money in the Eng. Lit. game.
Fame has betrayed him to examinations.
Like Landor, Donne and Shakespeare, Yeats is hated by schoolchildren — those dying generations: the captive audience isn't captivated.
In Sligo students gather and take notes while specialists lecture, cast a frigid eye on things he mentioned and the grave that quotes those posturing lines, and then, by bus, pass by.
Surely some newer study is at hand. When poverty or vanity distresses, what Ellmann, Jeffares, Henn, his hour come round, will slouch towards the University presses?
Let strangers, out of Yeats and his affairs, make souvenirs for sale, relics to hoard. We will not save or split the poet's hairs but read his poems, skipping when we're bored.
Fame is the spoor, and vultures won't be baulked of prey; and yet that voice of Yeats still gives new friends old thrills. What the good people chalked on walls, when Parker died, applies: Yeats lives.
James Simmons
Previous page
