Wednesday, December 07, 2005

WB Yeats - Poetry Archive

William Butler Yeats on the Poetry Archive

I heard about the Poetry Archive on Radio 4, and meant to visit it, but hadn't got around to it yet when I saw Joe's link to it. So I went to the site, and found this fascinating recording of WB Yeats talking about and then reading The Lake Isle of Innisfree. It was a bit crackly, but intensely moving to hear him speaking and reading his own poem. He reads it in a sing-song dreamy way which is appropriate to the poem. Yeats is one of my favourite poets, so this was a real find.

3 comments:

Out Of Jersey said...

I love Yeats work. The strength of his words have stood the test of time. Besides the fact he's Irish and won the Noble Prize.

Joe said...

On the poetry front I'm always reminded of Spike Milligan's war memoirs. He tells of an upper-class officer who condescends to educate the working class oiks of the enlisted men by reading poetry to them. Men are all on parade as Sgt Major bellows (you need to put on your working class trying to be posh voice for this to work): "The Major is about to address you 'orrible men about (consults scrap of paper) Keats. And I bet none of you hignorant buggers knows what a keat is."...

Seriously, the site is very good - poetry is always best when being read by the bard themselves.

Yewtree said...

Ah, the sergeant major story explains Karen Traviss's post.