Each of us has a short list of absolute favorite writers –poets and novelists who inspire and change the way we look at the world. For me, one of those literary idols is Ireland’s greatest poet, William Butler Yeats, born on June 13, 1865 in Sandymount, near Dublin. Alongside his enormous and influential body of literary work, Yeats once famously observed, 
Education is not filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
I have adopted that idea as the motto of my Don’t Know Much About series.
Yeats won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, writing what the Nobel Committee described as “inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation.” He was the first Irishman to win the Nobel Prize.
Here’s a sneak preview about Yeats from the forthcoming Don’t Know Much About Literature, my first collaboration with my daughter, Jenny Davis. (The book will be published on July 28, 2009.)
As Ireland struggled for independence in the early 20th century, a group of poets and playwrights began a movement known as the Irish Literary Revival. Leading them was William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), a poet and playwright, who wanted “to create a whole literature, a whole dramatic movement” from the epics of Celtic legend and the folklore, fairytales, and ballads of his native Ireland. Though Yeats served on the first Irish Senate in 1922, his lyrical poetry often kept its distance from politics: In “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1893), for example, the poet yearns for a peaceful escape, while in later poems, like “Politics” (1939), he would rather pay attention to a pretty girl than to “war and war’s alarms.” Now “Come away, O human child!”, and see how you fare on this W.B. Yeats quiz.
1. Could Yeats speak Gaelic?
2. Which nationalistic Yeats play premiered with his unrequited love, Maud Gonne, playing the title role?
3. Which hero of Irish legend, sometimes called the “Irish Achilles,” was featured in five Yeats plays?
4. Which Yeats poem eulogizes the Irish patriots killed in the 1916 Easter Rising and expresses his ambivalence about militant nationalism with the line, “A terrible beauty is born”?
5. In which poem, written in the aftermath of the first World War, does the poet warn of a political situation where “Things fall apart; The centre cannot hold”?
6. Which Yeats myth recreates a scene from Greek mythology, imagining the violent history that will follow from a young woman’s rape by Zeus?
Answers
1. No. Yeats believed in reviving the Irish language, but never succeeded in learning to speak or read it himself.
2. Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902).
3. Cuchulain(pronounced koo-hool-n).
4. “Easter, 1916” (1916).
5. “The Second Coming” (1919).
6. “Leda and the Swan” (1928).
For more about Yeats, here is a link to a page in the Poetry Archive: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=1688#
Another link at poets.org http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/117
Yeats died on January 28, 1939 at the age of 73. His obituary from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0613.html
