It was orson welles who had said, a film is not good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet, sir i would like to give you my deepest thanks for opening my eyes in a very new and interesting way, not only my respect for poetry and you have arised but also my filmmaking understanding has deepened, i will get into poetry and pretty soon start writing my own for it seems to be the mother of all art, and will help me tremendously in my filmmaking journey, thank you sir once again and i wish you never stop making these videos!
A highly accomplished close reading. With an understanding of the parable alluded to, this poem is no longer a merely wistful expression of longing for rustic simplicity, but a driving and urgent prayer for a misspent life to be redeemed. We experience the prodigal's squandered inheritance as the severed connection with an Irish heritage (or any spiritual birthright).
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant introduction to poetry and a particular poem. By the way, core is from the same root as "coeur", from the Proto Indo-European -kerd. And, if you think of the lake isle as a core within the lake that is surrounded by land, a heart within a heart, then the core of the heart is also a heart within the heart. The brilliant explication by Dana Giolia has opened this poem to me both intellectually and deeply emotionally. Thank you.
Goosebumps as soon as you began introducing him. This makes history so glorious. Us Irish poets love him, innit 😄 My modern-day parody that I wrote I will arise and go now And go to the late-night mall And pop-tarts I’ll buy there And a jar of hair gel Or maybe mousse or fixing spray As gel dries dripping slow And worse, it takes away the glow Of natural, healthy hair I will arise and go now For whether night or day The mall is always open With products on display I love the second floor This Yeats poem is expressing nostalgia for a simple Irish natural retreat as a distant city dweller.
@@DanaGioiaPoet Yeats was heavily influenced by the Dada movement as well as enjoyed the more formal, classical poetry of the past so this is why he chanted his poems.
@@toribukofske3929 Sometimes life really is that theatrical and over the top; they are moments we will remember forever, and others are ones we wish we could forget.
Wonderful to find this. It is also double proof that no matter how gifted, how subtle, how sensitive or how intelligent one is, the art of reciting poetry well is a separate art indeed.
The Lake Isle lives in the poet's imagination and in his heart. There are millions of people today in big cities who long for the same thing the poet does in this poem. I certainly do. The poet equates himself with the prodigal son in the sense that his true self originates in the rural natural places not in a big dirty evil city. He has been led away by vice and selfishness and illusion and now seeks to return in a kind of penance-- seeking peace in the simple life removed from the world's corruption. He arises, gets up and goes , but also rises in a spiritual sense by changing his life.
Seeking the quiet and peace of being close to nature and being settled in one's self, in one's flow of thoughts, in the play of sounds of surrounds I feel my feelings and being closer to my God.
Thank you, had to go thru similar untieing & appreciating of Keats's 'To Autumn' - it's nice to do this process with another while at a place like the poem describes.
Thank you for a liberating lecture. It was like you were distilling a fine tasting wine. To me an accessible lecturer knows how to make the topic less confusing to those who want to learn how to do the same. I'll be looking out for more of your fine wines/lectures in future.
this is one of my favorite poems--if you like it, listen to Judy Collins's version of it as a song. Yeats's poem bears a bit a resemblance to Blake's London.
This is excellently well done, and is the best answer I've ever heard to the question, 'Why does it matter who wrote Shakespeare's works, as long as we have them?' If you don't have the background information right, you won't correctly understand the poem (or other literary work). That's why we need to know who the beautiful young man is, who is being compared to a summer's day in Sonnet #18. Why Polonius's verbosity is made fun of, why he is called a fishmonger and why Hamlet dispenses with him by a sword while he is spying on Hamlet and his mother.
For me good poetry is never prescriptive; it suggests, points in many directions, which makes it dense with possibilities of different lives, different worlds, firing the imagination.
not the Lecturer we deserve, The Lecturer we need....... Thankyou so so much sir, your lectures helped me first time in my life to understand what poetry is and how to read and actually enjoy it. Now I can confidently start my Masters in English Literature.
Thank you so very much. My comprehension of this, my all time favourite poem is, thanks to you , at a new height. It truly represents the yearning of my heart's inner core!
I thank you for this analysis of Yeats's poem--but I can never appreciate him, because after he had become "an institution," he said of Wilfred Owen's poetry that it was “unworthy of the Poets Corner of a country newspaper.” Owen was the greatest poet to emerge from the First World War, and his poems touch me in a way that Yeats's never have.
I never got Yeats’s poetry. I still don’t. I’m quite fond of Heaney’s prose but have had issues with his verse. I remember studying this poem, and I struggled. While I still don’t think I got it, I did like Dana’s explanation. I remember my years as an undergraduate English major , I don’t remember such a patient approach. This was a very pleasant revisiting of why I studied literature
Patience describes Dana's approach to literature. How, just nice, it is when a somewhat daunting subject can be made more accessible and I dare to say, more simple. Dana, your restrained joy is infectious. So that if one loves literature, but for whatever reason, has strayed. Your lecture would revived a waining faithfulness. Just Wonderful!
Thank you for the insightful lecture. Yeat's reading reminded me for some reason of Jefferson Airplane's song "White Rabbit". It has similar musical energy and trance-like quality. Also, you mentioned the way the poem is graphically organized, with the shorter line at the end of every stanza. It might look like the soft waves of the lake, which is the sound that the speaker so longs for
Such an informative and well presented interpretation. Thank you. Two things that worried me about the poem that weren’t commented on - not a criticism as there simply isn’t time to cover every possibility ! Firstly, why 9 bean rows? Would any other monosyllabic number have done? Taking the view that a poet always uses words carefully I looked up the numerology of 9 and it represents completion. The highest value single digit number associated with experience and wisdom. In Victorian England at this time there was a fad for the occult and Yeats was interested in this area so would have known. Secondly, ‘ where the crickets sing’. I’m not sure if there are crickets in Ireland, they’re relatively rare in the UK. As someone who speaks a reasonable level of Italian I know of the Italian phrase ‘ where the crickets sing’ as being associated with cemeteries and death. Also, veils of the morning may hold morning and mourning together. Possibly, Yeats is alluding via a natural description to both the natural daily cycle and the cycle of human life and death which is part of the world of Innisfree and, as such, is registered with a calm acceptance.
@jeffhunt2475 I don't know where you now live or where you grew up, but I was born and grew up in the Midwest. There is no dearth of crickets there. Before a record-breaking cold and snowy winter, my home was invaded by crickets that I always picked up and relocated outdoors. As I picked up each one, I kept thinking, 'I hope you're not telling me that we're going to have a really bad winter.' That was exactly what came to pass.
Perhaps it's not right to over analyse poetry either , for meanings that just don't exist. That's only overthinking what should primarily be an emotional experience . Nine bean rows is possibly an alliterative effect ? While the crickets are just rural crickets , making a noise in the evening.
Thank you master, in my town we try and try to understand poetry in some way (almost any way), and it´s quite a mess when we start to read and say some "poems", we don´t get any light sometimes. Your speech tend to enlighten our doubts, Thank you very much
though I do adhere to the precept that " a poem should not mean, but be" I must praise Prof Gioia for his lucidity, depth of insight, and non-didactic yet expert style of instruction.
Thank you, Sir, for a wonderful exposition. We had to learn this poem at school some 62 years ago. However, the meaning of the verse was never explained to us. I have always loved the poem and your analysis of it has given it a whole new life for me.
I learned to love poetry by hearing by Mexican-American mother recite the poems she had learned in elementary school. They meant a great deal to her. And they eventually changed my life.
A wonderful analysis. There is but one extra level of anlaysis to note and that is of topography. Inisfree or in Irish (an Ghaeilge) Inis Fraoigh, is a lake that situates in Co Sligo. This is important ss Yeats was intimately linked with Sligo and the topography of that county is recounted in his references in other poems to Ben Bulben. His final resting place is at Drumcliff also in Sligo. Another thing to note is that in the Irish language we have two main words for isle/island. One is oileán and the other inis. Now, inis is usually anglicised as 'inish' hence the pronounication of Yeats' poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree shoukd be 'Inishfree'. This, then, more closely reflects the original language pronounciation of Inis Fraoigh (-igh in Irish is almost wholly silent or palatized). An inis (isle) has a meaning of a small lake or wet area between rivers and thus a kind of watery meadow. It can also mean a proper lake, but in placenames it usually denotes a watery area between rivers, as in the case of Ennis, the main town in Co Clare, where the name derives from a dry area between tributaries of the Fergus river, making it like a dry patch in a wet landscape. Go míle maith agat, tá sé álainn dán! Beir bua ó Bhaile Átha Cliath!
In a poem even if you don’t know the meaning of some word, just invent your own meaning. You will never be wrong. Poem is understood by the reader and not by the poet. Just go and enjoy.
Oh, I am totally absorbed by the analysis of thus masterpiece. This is the first video which brought me to Mr. Dana Gioia. Now I am the fan of his chamnel. His musical voice also brought me to a greater hight. Thanks Gioia, please keep on up loading such as many as you can. Would you please recite more famous poems along with your own.
Thanks for this , it was interesting and made me think more about a poem I have loved for many years. I was familiar with the parable of the prodigal son but had never before recognised the reference to it in the poem. It made a lot of sense. Another reference I’ve always felt Yeats was making with the beauty and peace of the lake isle was to a higher state of consciousness, a more authentic state of inner being. The “rising” of the soul to divine realms where peace and beauty are intrinsic to being. Yeats was a member of the Golden Dawn and was interested in the metaphysical and the esoteric, and I feel there’s a bit of that going on here too, someone in a tormented mental and emotional state who longs for the simple peace - who is longing for the great heart’s core (or coeur!)! Thanks again for a really interesting look at a wonderful poem
Oh my God! This gentleman explains poetry so,so well! Now I will arise and go poetry with greater joy! He has pulled me off the grey pavement of battling poetry.Sometimes,let's know how to contact these great teachers on emails,etc; if only to appreciate them.
" I will arise and go to the supermarket on a rainy day, when the sky is grey and i shall walk down the isle number six and stare at the cold cut meats..."
Just a note from an Irish person: Innisfree is natively pronounced InnISH-free; i.e. with a slight emphasis on the end of 'Innis' (and with an 'ish' rather than an 'iss' sound) instead of the 'free'. You can't really hear it in Yeat's recording (unless you're listening for it) due to the poor quality and his forced cadence. Innisfree is the Anglicisation of the Gaelic word ''Inis Fraoch' (pronounced Innish-Free-uch, Inis being the Irish for island), meaning, as mentioned in the video 'Island of Heather'. Innisfree is on Lough Gill, by which Yeat's grandfather lived. The Hill of Grianan forms the lake's eastern shore - Grianán being an Irish word describing a sunny place, or (more relevantly) a place of outstanding natural beauty. Yeat's isn't just talking about returning to any old natural place; he's talking about returning to a place where nature is in her glory - the antithesis of the speaker's condition.
Wow! I will be using this as part of an introduction to a high school sophomore English unit on poetry. I have a MA in English literature and have admired this poem but I never noticed the allusion to the Parable of the Prodigal Son in many readings. Thank you.
A helpful explanation of this poem (and others). Thank you. I wish I'd had you as my English teacher; it would have made lessons more interesting, meaningful, and enjoyable.
Ive heard a radio recording of Yeats talking about this poem. He said he had come to hate it. It was a product of his fanciful youth and not, in his opinion a good poem. He read it in the very odd stilted way people read poetry back then.
Yeats did not come to dislike the poem. He felt imprisoned by its fame when so much of his other work was less recognized. He recorded the poem three times. All the rest of his poems with one exception went unrecorded. A great loss.
What is term we can use for sound of mosquito 🦟 when we desperately want to sleep and it makes sure to disturb you with that noise.. well in a part of planet where we live it's a common thing we started looking with "Bhin-bhi-na-na" 😅 I like the episode . Quote informative.
The wattle and clay (daub) house is an allusion to a type of dwelling place - the Iron Age Celtic roundhouse - so there is a Celtic revivalist aspiration to the image of Inisfree Yeats imagines here. It is a calling for Irish immigrants to return home as the prodigal son willing to serve the highly idealised rural lifestyle offered by some republicans at the time. That is the lesson we were taught to read in it during lessons in school.
I always thought that Yeats's aspiration to plant "bean-rows" was a reference to Thoreau's Walden, where Henry David writes, Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.
...and although he longs to go back to Ireland, he wishes for isolation from its people. Implying he finds both equilly tiring weather English or Irish, it's only his native land he longs for.
I have never been able to get into poetry outside of its use in song lyrics. I love the written word. I adore fiction, but poetry always makes me zone out mentally. I am not sure why I have never gotten into it. I appreciate it as an art form but I am rarely entertained by it. It seems somehow pretentious a lot of times. Im not sure if its the flowery phrasing or the over use of metaphor. Maybe it is all these things. Or perhaps I am not terribly sophisticated. That is a real possibility.
HALF A VERSE (For one (D. Gioia's 03-25-2021) appreciated W. B. Yeats presentation.) One may see need of both: wild, lone; and this blind and tame that is not so hard to understand. (c)JMD!
Its just a small point, maybe made already, but the pronunciation of Innisfree in Ireland would be Innishfree, and that is how everyone there says it. The recording by Yeats is indistinct at that point but here is Adrian Dunbar reading it: th-cam.com/video/1VgV8_mQaw4/w-d-xo.html The reason is to do with Irish place names being anglised hundreds of years ago and ending up approximating an original Irish phrase, but looking English. Eg Cnoc Mór or big hill would have been turned into Knockmore by British mapmakers, but people knew the original Irish words so often kept the Irish language pronunciations, in this case Inis is a word that means island, and is pronounced Inish.
It was orson welles who had said, a film is not good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet, sir i would like to give you my deepest thanks for opening my eyes in a very new and interesting way, not only my respect for poetry and you have arised but also my filmmaking understanding has deepened, i will get into poetry and pretty soon start writing my own for it seems to be the mother of all art, and will help me tremendously in my filmmaking journey, thank you sir once again and i wish you never stop making these videos!
A highly accomplished close reading. With an understanding of the parable alluded to, this poem is no longer a merely wistful expression of longing for rustic simplicity, but a driving and urgent prayer for a misspent life to be redeemed. We experience the prodigal's squandered inheritance as the severed connection with an Irish heritage (or any spiritual birthright).
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant introduction to poetry and a particular poem. By the way, core is from the same root as "coeur", from the Proto Indo-European -kerd. And, if you think of the lake isle as a core within the lake that is surrounded by land, a heart within a heart, then the core of the heart is also a heart within the heart. The brilliant explication by Dana Giolia has opened this poem to me both intellectually and deeply emotionally. Thank you.
i can feel this video will change my life, thank you very much.
Goosebumps as soon as you began introducing him. This makes history so glorious. Us Irish poets love him, innit 😄
My modern-day parody that I wrote
I will arise and go now
And go to the late-night mall
And pop-tarts I’ll buy there
And a jar of hair gel
Or maybe mousse or fixing spray
As gel dries dripping slow
And worse, it takes away the glow
Of natural, healthy hair
I will arise and go now
For whether night or day
The mall is always open
With products on display
I love the second floor
This Yeats poem is expressing nostalgia for a simple Irish natural retreat
as a distant city dweller.
That reading by Yeats was chilling. I never heard anyone recite poetry like that.
I agree. Yeats doesn't recite the poem, he chants it. Almost sings it. I wonder if that is how classical poets read their work 2000 years earlier.
@@DanaGioiaPoetthere's also Robert Frost video recording available
@@DanaGioiaPoet Yeats was heavily influenced by the Dada movement as well as enjoyed the more formal, classical poetry of the past so this is why he chanted his poems.
@@toribukofske3929 Sometimes life really is that theatrical and over the top; they are moments we will remember forever, and others are ones we wish we could forget.
So enlightning. Thanks from the core of my heart.
Wow! I wish I had received this type of education in AP Literature. Thank you!
Wonderful to find this. It is also double proof that no matter how gifted, how subtle, how sensitive or how intelligent one is, the art of reciting poetry well is a separate art indeed.
The Lake Isle lives in the poet's imagination and in his heart. There are millions of people today in big cities who long for the same thing the poet does in this poem. I certainly do. The poet equates himself with the prodigal son in the sense that his true self originates in the rural natural places not in a big dirty evil city. He has been led away by vice and selfishness and illusion and now seeks to return in a kind of penance-- seeking peace in the simple life removed from the world's corruption. He arises, gets up and goes , but also rises in a spiritual sense by changing his life.
Fantastic lecture Mr. Gioia, thank you so much for sharing and analyzing this beautiful and timeless poem.
Seeking the quiet and peace of being close to nature and being settled in one's self, in one's flow of thoughts, in the play of sounds of surrounds I feel my feelings and being closer to my God.
Thank you, had to go thru similar untieing & appreciating of Keats's 'To Autumn' - it's nice to do this process with another while at a place like the poem describes.
Stunning lecture, and I know nothing of poems....I am so inpired to do so by you. Thanks SO much✨
This (as someone who is entirely foreign to poetry) was wonderful and illuminating. Thank you
Best lesson on analysis ever
Thank you for a liberating lecture. It was like you were distilling a fine tasting wine. To me an accessible lecturer knows how to make the topic less confusing to those who want to learn how to do the same. I'll be looking out for more of your fine wines/lectures in future.
Plllll”, hi 30:43
excellent beginning. I'll watch the rest!
this is one of my favorite poems--if you like it, listen to Judy Collins's version of it as a song. Yeats's poem bears a bit a resemblance to Blake's London.
This is excellently well done, and is the best answer I've ever heard to the question, 'Why does it matter who wrote Shakespeare's works, as long as we have them?'
If you don't have the background information right, you won't correctly understand the poem (or other literary work). That's why we need to know who the beautiful young man is, who is being compared to a summer's day in Sonnet #18. Why Polonius's verbosity is made fun of, why he is called a fishmonger and why Hamlet dispenses with him by a sword while he is spying on Hamlet and his mother.
For me good poetry is never prescriptive; it suggests, points in many directions, which makes it dense with possibilities of different lives, different worlds, firing the imagination.
I'm so glad to see you posting these! A gift for many.
This is just beautiful and did in fact untie Yeats's poem for me. Thank you so much.
Thank you Mr. Giola for opening my mind to an art form that eluded me. Because of your passion, I will look at poetry in an entirely different way.
You have paid me (and the art) the highest compliment.
From an aspiring poet, I thank you for this wonderful teaching!
not the Lecturer we deserve, The Lecturer we need.......
Thankyou so so much sir, your lectures helped me first time in my life to understand what poetry is and how to read and actually enjoy it. Now I can confidently start my Masters in English Literature.
I'm glad to provide some small help as you further your career in literature.
Thank you so very much. My comprehension of this, my all time favourite poem is, thanks to you , at a new height. It truly represents the yearning of my heart's inner core!
I thank you for this analysis of Yeats's poem--but I can never appreciate him, because after he had become "an institution," he said of Wilfred Owen's poetry that it was “unworthy of the Poets Corner of a country newspaper.” Owen was the greatest poet to emerge from the First World War, and his poems touch me in a way that Yeats's never have.
This is a superb example of
the ART of exposition!!!
I never got Yeats’s poetry. I still don’t. I’m quite fond of Heaney’s prose but have had issues with his verse. I remember studying this poem, and I struggled. While I still don’t think I got it, I did like Dana’s explanation. I remember my years as an undergraduate English major , I don’t remember such a patient approach. This was a very pleasant revisiting of why I studied literature
Patience describes Dana's approach to literature. How, just nice, it is when a somewhat daunting subject can be made more accessible and I dare to say, more simple. Dana, your restrained joy is infectious. So that if one loves literature, but for whatever reason, has strayed. Your lecture would revived a waining faithfulness. Just Wonderful!
Thank you for the insightful lecture. Yeat's reading reminded me for some reason of Jefferson Airplane's song "White Rabbit". It has similar musical energy and trance-like quality. Also, you mentioned the way the poem is graphically organized, with the shorter line at the end of every stanza. It might look like the soft waves of the lake, which is the sound that the speaker so longs for
Fantastic, wonderous walk through! Beautifully paced, wonderfully inspiring of reflection. Thanks.😊
Phenomenal series of videos!
Such an informative and well presented interpretation. Thank you. Two things that worried me about the poem that weren’t commented on - not a criticism as there simply isn’t time to cover every possibility !
Firstly, why 9 bean rows? Would any other monosyllabic number have done? Taking the view that a poet always uses words carefully I looked up the numerology of 9 and it represents completion. The highest value single digit number associated with experience and wisdom. In Victorian England at this time there was a fad for the occult and Yeats was interested in this area so would have known.
Secondly, ‘ where the crickets sing’. I’m not sure if there are crickets in Ireland, they’re relatively rare in the UK. As someone who speaks a reasonable level of Italian I know of the Italian phrase ‘ where the crickets sing’ as being associated with cemeteries and death.
Also, veils of the morning may hold morning and mourning together. Possibly, Yeats is alluding via a natural description to both the natural daily cycle and the cycle of human life and death which is part of the world of Innisfree and, as such, is registered with a calm acceptance.
9 is the number of the Ancient Greek muses
@jeffhunt2475 I don't know where you now live or where you grew up, but I was born and grew up in the Midwest. There is no dearth of crickets there. Before a record-breaking cold and snowy winter, my home was invaded by crickets that I always picked up and relocated outdoors. As I picked up each one, I kept thinking, 'I hope you're not telling me that we're going to have a really bad winter.' That was exactly what came to pass.
Your lecture was a masterpiece!
Perhaps it's not right to over analyse poetry either , for meanings that just don't exist. That's only overthinking what should primarily be an emotional experience . Nine bean rows is possibly an alliterative effect ? While the crickets are just rural crickets , making a noise in the evening.
Thank you master, in my town we try and try to understand poetry in some way (almost any way), and it´s quite a mess when we start to read and say some "poems", we don´t get any light sometimes. Your speech tend to enlighten our doubts, Thank you very much
though I do adhere to the precept that " a poem should not mean, but be" I must praise Prof Gioia for his lucidity, depth of insight, and non-didactic yet expert style of instruction.
Thank you, Sir, for a wonderful exposition.
We had to learn this poem at school some 62 years ago. However, the meaning of the verse was never explained to us.
I have always loved the poem and your analysis of it has given it a whole new life for me.
I learned to love poetry by hearing by Mexican-American mother recite the poems she had learned in elementary school. They meant a great deal to her. And they eventually changed my life.
A wonderful analysis. There is but one extra level of anlaysis to note and that is of topography. Inisfree or in Irish (an Ghaeilge) Inis Fraoigh, is a lake that situates in Co Sligo. This is important ss Yeats was intimately linked with Sligo and the topography of that county is recounted in his references in other poems to Ben Bulben. His final resting place is at Drumcliff also in Sligo. Another thing to note is that in the Irish language we have two main words for isle/island. One is oileán and the other inis. Now, inis is usually anglicised as 'inish' hence the pronounication of Yeats' poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree shoukd be 'Inishfree'. This, then, more closely reflects the original language pronounciation of Inis Fraoigh (-igh in Irish is almost wholly silent or palatized).
An inis (isle) has a meaning of a small lake or wet area between rivers and thus a kind of watery meadow. It can also mean a proper lake, but in placenames it usually denotes a watery area between rivers, as in the case of Ennis, the main town in Co Clare, where the name derives from a dry area between tributaries of the Fergus river, making it like a dry patch in a wet landscape.
Go míle maith agat, tá sé álainn dán! Beir bua ó Bhaile Átha Cliath!
Very good, excellent !!Thank you so much for this beautiful lesson in WB Yeats poem 🙏
Wow. The analysis at the ending is a twist greater than the ending of "The Sixth Sense". Thank you.
Thank you so much for such analysis of this poem Sir !
From Bangladesh 🇧🇩
All undergraduates should listen to this "unknotting" of The Lake Isle of Innisfree!
In a poem even if you don’t know the meaning of some word, just invent your own meaning. You will never be wrong. Poem is understood by the reader and not by the poet. Just go and enjoy.
I write poetry and I hope people look up the meanings if they don’t know them.
@@Degjoy people seldom do it.
Funny. Why dont youMake your own poems,,?
No. This is wrong. Poets want to communicate. Word meaning is more important in poetry than in other types of writing.
T.S Eliot's impersonal look at poetry?
Thank you. This reminds me of the intensely captivating and spell-binding lectures I heard 50 years ago at University from my favourite lecturers.
You and I had the good luck of having a few great teachers.
Oh, I am totally absorbed by the analysis of thus masterpiece. This is the first video which brought me to Mr. Dana Gioia. Now I am the fan of his chamnel. His musical voice also brought me to a greater hight. Thanks Gioia, please keep on up loading such as many as you can.
Would you please recite more famous poems along with your own.
Thank you for this wonderful video. This is excellent material for me to assign my students to watch at home for the British Literature Class I teach.
Thanks for this , it was interesting and made me think more about a poem I have loved for many years. I was familiar with the parable of the prodigal son but had never before recognised the reference to it in the poem. It made a lot of sense.
Another reference I’ve always felt Yeats was making with the beauty and peace of the lake isle was to a higher state of consciousness, a more authentic state of inner being. The “rising” of the soul to divine realms where peace and beauty are intrinsic to being. Yeats was a member of the Golden Dawn and was interested in the metaphysical and the esoteric, and I feel there’s a bit of that going on here too, someone in a tormented mental and emotional state who longs for the simple peace - who is longing for the great heart’s core (or coeur!)!
Thanks again for a really interesting look at a wonderful poem
❤🙏
Perfect for me. Loved it!
Oh my God! This gentleman explains poetry so,so well! Now I will arise and go poetry with greater joy! He has pulled me off the grey pavement of battling poetry.Sometimes,let's know how to contact these great teachers on emails,etc; if only to appreciate them.
Beautiful explanation sir!💞
So lucky to have found this video. Brilliant analysis and thank you for making this video
" I will arise and go to the supermarket on a rainy day, when the sky is grey and i shall walk down the isle number six and stare at the cold cut meats..."
When I first read the poem (40 years ago), I also thought that Lake Isle of Innisfree referred to a place of "inner free"dom, a place of inner peace.
Just a note from an Irish person: Innisfree is natively pronounced InnISH-free; i.e. with a slight emphasis on the end of 'Innis' (and with an 'ish' rather than an 'iss' sound) instead of the 'free'. You can't really hear it in Yeat's recording (unless you're listening for it) due to the poor quality and his forced cadence. Innisfree is the Anglicisation of the Gaelic word ''Inis Fraoch' (pronounced Innish-Free-uch, Inis being the Irish for island), meaning, as mentioned in the video 'Island of Heather'.
Innisfree is on Lough Gill, by which Yeat's grandfather lived. The Hill of Grianan forms the lake's eastern shore - Grianán being an Irish word describing a sunny place, or (more relevantly) a place of outstanding natural beauty. Yeat's isn't just talking about returning to any old natural place; he's talking about returning to a place where nature is in her glory - the antithesis of the speaker's condition.
Wonderful, very enlightening. More please Mr Gioia.
Thank you so much. It was beautiful.
Thank you so much. How wonderful and miraculous!
Enlightening! Tks
Wow! I will be using this as part of an introduction to a high school sophomore English unit on poetry. I have a MA in English literature and have admired this poem but I never noticed the allusion to the Parable of the Prodigal Son in many readings. Thank you.
Yeats ❤️
This was a beautiful unraveling. Thank you!!
watching the video gave me joy and peace.. thank you for this nice analysis 🙏🏻😌(tek Türk benim sanırım..)
❤🙏
A helpful explanation of this poem (and others). Thank you. I wish I'd had you as my English teacher; it would have made lessons more interesting, meaningful, and enjoyable.
This is so wonderful! Thank you for this video!
Ive heard a radio recording of Yeats talking about this poem. He said he had come to hate it. It was a product of his fanciful youth and not, in his opinion a good poem. He read it in the very odd stilted way people read poetry back then.
Yeats did not come to dislike the poem. He felt imprisoned by its fame when so much of his other work was less recognized. He recorded the poem three times. All the rest of his poems with one exception went unrecorded. A great loss.
Thank you so so much Mr Dana Gioia, for this magnificent analysis of this poem. Best wishes, Sir.
Wonderful explanation. Thank you, Mr. Gioia.
Thank you for this great video Mr. Gioia
So grateful for this. Thank you prof.
Such a wonderful channel, this will be my go-to study class on Saturday nights :) x
Thanks, Dana! I just shared this video with my team at Cæsura!
This is a brilliant analysis.
I enjoyed this unknotting. Thank you Dana Gioia.🙏🏽🌸
Wonderful, thank you.
This was beautiful and brilliantly done.
This is a brilliant exposition!
This was immensely interesting, thank you!
Marvellous! Thank you. 🙏
Thank you very much 👍🏻🧡
Thank you.
What is term we can use for sound of mosquito 🦟 when we desperately want to sleep and it makes sure to disturb you with that noise.. well in a part of planet where we live it's a common thing we started looking with "Bhin-bhi-na-na" 😅 I like the episode . Quote informative.
Excellent unknotting of a poem.
The wattle and clay (daub) house is an allusion to a type of dwelling place - the Iron Age Celtic roundhouse - so there is a Celtic revivalist aspiration to the image of Inisfree Yeats imagines here. It is a calling for Irish immigrants to return home as the prodigal son willing to serve the highly idealised rural lifestyle offered by some republicans at the time. That is the lesson we were taught to read in it during lessons in school.
I always thought that Yeats's aspiration to plant "bean-rows" was a reference to Thoreau's Walden, where Henry David writes, Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus.
Methinks he was alluding to the stinking farts that would follow from chowing on so much beans - from the core of color's core.
Loved this, thank you. I wonder too if there is a contrast of England to Ireland, with all the political implications?
Wonderful 😊
Very good !
Thank you
Thanks a lot
❤
Not only the story of the Prodigal Son, but also Psalm 55:6 mirrors the message of this poem.
...and although he longs to go back to Ireland, he wishes for isolation from its people. Implying he finds both equilly tiring weather English or Irish, it's only his native land he longs for.
analyzing a poem is the surest way to rob it of its magic
I have never been able to get into poetry outside of its use in song lyrics. I love the written word. I adore fiction, but poetry always makes me zone out mentally. I am not sure why I have never gotten into it. I appreciate it as an art form but I am rarely entertained by it. It seems somehow pretentious a lot of times. Im not sure if its the flowery phrasing or the over use of metaphor. Maybe it is all these things. Or perhaps I am not terribly sophisticated. That is a real possibility.
Song is where all poetry began. Perhaps song will lead you deeper into poetry.
The line that made me love poetry: "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree"
Absolutely fascinating stuff, and well read and interpreted. One thing, though: Innisfree is pronounced 'Innish Free'
Thanks
I would have welcomed some discussion of the meter of the poem. As Ezra Pound said, poetry begins to die when it gets too far from Music.
HALF A VERSE
(For one (D. Gioia's 03-25-2021) appreciated W. B. Yeats presentation.)
One may see need of both: wild, lone;
and this blind and tame
that is not so hard to understand. (c)JMD!
Why is it that presenters so often don’t look at the camera; the viewer?
Was wondering too. They probably felt that would be too intense. Like the viewer was being stared at and talked down too.
Its just a small point, maybe made already, but the pronunciation of Innisfree in Ireland would be Innishfree, and that is how everyone there says it. The recording by Yeats is indistinct at that point but here is Adrian Dunbar reading it: th-cam.com/video/1VgV8_mQaw4/w-d-xo.html
The reason is to do with Irish place names being anglised hundreds of years ago and ending up approximating an original Irish phrase, but looking English. Eg Cnoc Mór or big hill would have been turned into Knockmore by British mapmakers, but people knew the original Irish words so often kept the Irish language pronunciations, in this case Inis is a word that means island, and is pronounced Inish.
❤🙏
❤❤❤❤