Live on blog poetry interpretation!

 To do my live blog poetry interpretation I first looked around for difficult poets and poems, but then, as I wrote yesterday, I happened on song lyrics that seemed harder than any poem I could find. So I decided I might as well just grab any old famous poet poem I could find and see what happens. I read a poem I liked by Yeats once, and, looking around, this Swan poem showed up and I thought that was good enough for me. I like swans. I haven't read it yet. I'll give you the whole thing to read, and I'll read it too. Then I'll interpret it, on the fly, with a weak understanding of poetry, and Yeats, and actually lots of things that I'll feel free to bring into play here because I feel it will be good for poetry as a whole to be brought into the hurly-burly of the waking world and particularly of almost but not quite unhinged library blogs. To my blog readers who are poets: you may want to read this one with your eyes shut. But I do it for poetry! You can also skip down and read the poetry with my commentary right off. I'm just being polite here.

The Wild Swans at Coole

By William Butler Yeats

The trees are in their autumn beauty,   

The woodland paths are dry,

Under the October twilight the water   

Mirrors a still sky;

Upon the brimming water among the stones   

Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me   

Since I first made my count;

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings   

Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   

And now my heart is sore.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,   

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   

Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;   

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,   

Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water,   

Mysterious, beautiful;   

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day   

To find they have flown away? 



Okay, now with my commentary: 

The Wild Swans at Coole

 -as I said, I was won over some by the title, at least the wild swans part. How confusing can wild swans be? Don't know where Coole is though assume it's a place, with swans.

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
-good, good, autumn trees, we get that here, super pretty. Of course it's early summer now, but I'll use my imagination!  

The woodland paths are dry,
-yes, paths, country, or wild, no sidewalks, pleasant weather...

Under the October twilight the water   

Mirrors a still sky;
 -evening very clear and still, a lake too! I am totally understanding the poem so far. Can we stop now while the going's good? No? You okay?

Upon the brimming water among the stones   

Are nine-and-fifty swans.
 -Oh! That's a lot of swans. It's not just a pretty scene on a lovely evening. It's an awesome spectacle of nature!

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me   

Since I first made my count;
-So he's been counting these swans every fall for nineteen years. I think that's right. Either way he definitely likes counting, that's for sure.

I saw, before I had well finished,

All suddenly mount

And scatter wheeling in great broken rings   

Upon their clamorous wings.
-I think he roughly counted 59 swans and was sort of double checking, you know, firming up the count, when they all started flying and whirling about dramatically and noisily.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,   

And now my heart is sore.
-something about the beautiful birds or his history or both is making him sad.

All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,   

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,   

Trod with a lighter tread.
-okay, I've lost some of my confidence on this, but I think these 19 years have made this visit with the brilliant creatures heavier in his soul, beautiful but sad. Is it the years? I understand about the years- that bell-beat of their wings echoes the talk of time.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

They paddle in the cold

Companionable streams or climb the air;   

Their hearts have not grown old;

Passion or conquest, wander where they will,   

Attend upon them still.
-The swans are intimate with the world and with each other. They remain young. I don't think our poet is jealous exactly of the swans, but they lay bare the complications of his heart and the years. Oh, who am I kidding, he is so jealous and so painfully far away feeling.

But now they drift on the still water,
-drifting on still water we're back to the start and can finish counting, but it's too beautiful and now way too sad for that. It just makes us thoughtful, horribly thoughtful.  

Mysterious, beautiful;   

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day   

To find they have flown away?

-almost like a twist at the end? It seems like when he talks of the swans flying away it's like all his passion and conquest and young heartedness is flying away forever. Like, this all is sad enough watching, he's saying, but god, imagine when all the swans just go! I even had the off thought the the 59 swans were somehow the poet's 59 years. My stumbling feeling is that it's an elegy for years passing by and feeling the incomparable world slowly leaving you. There might even be the starting of acceptance at the end. Maybe it charts a passage in some middle age? Man, pretty poem though, that lake, with the swans! In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, where people actually enter fiction he talks about it being dangerous to enter poetry because it's so intense, too intense inside, every feeling is heightened. To me maybe it's just that intensity like Jasper Fforde says, or there'd be nothing at all inside a poem, depending on who your were, and what you'd be willing to bring. It's like you have to bring more of yourself to a poem than with other writing. Or maybe that's just me...