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William Butler YeatsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Blood and the Moon“ by W. B. Yeats (1928)
Published along with “Death” in Yeats’s 1933 collection The Winding Stair and Other Poems, this more expansive poem was also partly inspired by Kevin O’Higgins’s assassination. Additionally, the poem focuses on the titular “winding stair” of the collection, the central staircase in the 15th-century Irish tower in which Yeats was living, the Thoor Ballylee Castle. The castle was a central inspiration for Yeats writing and is referred to in both the title of this collection and the collection which proceeded it, 1928’s The Tower.
“Byzantium“ by W.B. Yeats (1933)
Also included in Yeats’s collection The Winding Stair and Other Poems, “Byzantium” is a follow up to Yeats’s earlier famous poem “Sailing to Byzantium.” Like “Death,” Byzantium is a reflection on mortality, but one that more deeply engages with Yeats’s spiritualist ideas. While “Death” is firmly fixed on the event and psychology of mortality, “Byzantium” explores Yeats’s understanding of the difference between the physical and spiritual selves, and in the ways in which the spiritual continues even beyond death.
“Discrete Series“ by George Oppen (1934)
Published in his debut poetry collection of the same title essentially concurrent with Yeats’s The Winding Stair, Oppen’s poem is both connected to and fundamentally distinct from Yeats’s work.
By William Butler Yeats
Among School Children
William Butler Yeats
A Prayer for My Daughter
William Butler Yeats
A Vision: An Explanation of Life Founded upon the Writings of Giraldus and upon Certain Doctrines Attributed to Kusta Ben Luka
William Butler Yeats
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
William Butler Yeats
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
William Butler Yeats
Easter, 1916
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Leda and the Swan
William Butler Yeats
No Second Troy
William Butler Yeats
Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
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The Second Coming
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The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old
William Butler Yeats