>The limits for any discussion of the relation between
>his poems and his politics have to be set by his
>political practice in the real world.
My quibble is that Yeats' "political practice", in the poems or in the
"real world", is no basis for evaluating the worth of the poems. Poetry
itself seems a witness for more complex ideas of consciousness, more
complex ways of being: human beings are complex creatures, after all.
You have to chop off large parts of the poems to make them fit a yes/no
dichotomy.
This is the nub of my quibble: but a short step from this to saying a
poet's political practice is _all_ that matters, and a short step from
that to trials of a poet's fitness to write at all. How many of even
committed poets survive such interrogations? Not Eluard, not even
Mayakovsky.
Reminds me a little of Bulgakov's satires...
Best
Alison
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