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Showing posts from February, 2011

Yeats: cinematographer

Yeats had the tremendous ability of manipulating space and time in his poems. He can maintain tension even while focusing on a single image over two stanzas: ...Imagining that I could A greater with a lesser pang assuage Or but to find if withered vein ran blood, I tore my body that its wine might cover Whatever could recall the lip of lover. And after that I held my fingers up, Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran Down every withered finger from the top; But the dark changed to red, and torches shone, And deafening music shook the leaves;...