W.B. Yeats: The Fascination of What’s Difficult

I want to continue with the idea of modern difficulty but first, a digression. In my previous post I mentioned the irony inherent in W.H. Auden’s elegy to William Butler Yeats, ‘poetry makes nothing happen.’  (Link to Auden reading the first part of poem below.) The primary irony I was referring to was using a …

Wallace Stevens: Of Modern Poetry

The question of the appeal of modern poetry is a very big concern among modernists and a common question among readers new to the genre. Many prefer the aesthetics of the Elizabethan's, enjoying the sing-song simplicity and rhyme. Often, when I tell people that I am passionate about modern poetry they ask, 'Why?' Some objectors …