Sherry Chandler » What W. B. Yeats … Really Says…
What W. B. Yeats … Really Says…
in which NYTimes reporter Adam Cohen tries his hand at explicating “The Second Coming” with help from Helen Vendler and Harold Bloom:
The pundits who quote it, though, are picking up on Yeats’s words, but not his world view. As Helen Vendler, the great Harvard poetry scholar, and others have pointed out, “The Second Coming” is really two poems. The first eight lines are filled with the pointed aphorisms that pundits like so much, while the rest of the poem suggests the unpredictability of how history will unfold. This second, less quoted part is the one that speaks most directly to the grim situation in Iraq.
Read it if you will. I’m just glad I haven’t succumbed to the temptation to quote Yeats — at least not lately.
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