Maître d'hôtel Yeats de William

I wrote this today because it was due today. Sorry if it seems rushed.

If there’s one thing I like to do, it’s explore. Explore what? Exactly. So, I’d like to take this opportunity to get to know a poet I otherwise know little about. William Butler Yeats seems to be a fairly well upheld figure in the poetry industry. I can’t recall ever reading any of Yeats’ poetry during a voyage in the past. This will be uncharted territory for me. I hope I don’t get killed.

“The Scholars” is a poem I can find myself relating to. It seems to be about people following the same path, because following the same path is what people do. Old men teach young men to write like they write. They all know the same people and think the same. And at the end it mentions Gaius Valerius Catullus: “Did their Catullus walk that way?” I did some research on this Catullus, and he seems to be quite amazing, based on my personal views. In “Catullus 16,” we see Catullus verbally attacking two of his critics, stating that he “will fuck you like a boy and throat-rape you.” I find this to be far from the norm when it comes to poetry and can’t help but think Yeats means to use it to make a point of being different. It seems different yet very exciting, especially when you are used to reading the same type of love poem. While many poets aim “To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear,” Catullus decided to rape beauty’s ignorant throat.

Yeats’ poem “The Stolen Child” describes children being taken away by faeries. This poem actually helped me out a great deal, because I have always wondered what happened to my brother. The poem best explains itself in four lines repeated through the entire work: “Come away, O human child!/To the waters and the wild/With a faery, hand in hand,/For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” The point Yeats makes is that children shouldn’t cry about being taken away by faeries. That isn’t really that bad of a fate to have to face. These children are so young they have yet to see many of the evils this world offers. Some people get shot in the face. I am sure anyone who has been shot in the face would much rather have simply been taken away by faeries. This is the exact point Yeats is trying to make, and I completely agree with him.

After moving on to “When You Are Old,” a pattern begins to show itself. Yeats poems tend to paint a picture of peacefulness with a slight case of anarchy. The first, “The Scholars” depicts people following a familiar, relaxing path, but dares us to do otherwise. “The Stolen Child” gives us hope for our children’s future: they shall spend their days in a far-off land with cute little faeries. The dark side of this is that the faeries are most likely eating the children. Yeats is trying to tell us what we don’t want to hear while covering it up with pretty lies. “When You Are Old” has the same intent, yet the bad part feels not bad at all. The poem makes you realize how close to death you are, but instead of creating feelings of sorrow, it creates feelings of other sorrow. The sorrow is good. You feel just good enough about your accomplishments.

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is an average feeling poem. It strikes up no feelings in my gut, but it does a fine job of reflecting what I think most of us are after. A man plans to move away, possibly running from some old pain, to find peace elsewhere. We’ve all surely been in that position. I know I’m in it right now. It’s just far too painful for me to live in a world where Thanksgiving only comes once a year. I mean, how am I supposed to live off of only 5,000 calories a day? I need so much more, yet it is so far away. I am truly heartbroken. Give me a cigarette.

Being the good parent he was, Yeats wanted to make sure his daughter turned out to be beautiful, rather than ugly. It is what any parent would want for his or her daughter. The worst thing I could ever imagine as a parent would be having an unattractive daughter. Yeats sets a good example for parents everywhere. If you can’t afford to make your daughter pretty, you’re not a good parent.

“Leda and the Swan” breaks away from the traditional Yeats. It takes the advice given in “The Scholars.” In this work, a nice lady named Leda finds herself in a position we’ve all been in after a long night of drinking. She is making babies with a swan. Raped by Zeus? I hardly think so. It seems to me like she just needed an excuse for something she never expected to end up on Youtube. Like in the earlier poems, we see a good situation gone awry.

My favorite characteristic about Keats’ writing is his ability to urge one not to follow protocol while following protocol. It’s somewhat like someone working at Wal-Mart and telling shoppers to make purchases somewhere else. It’s a good idea, but it takes a real hero to pull it off.

Yeats, I like what you’ve done with the place. It was fantastic meeting you.

Poetry

It's been a really long time since I've written a poem

I need a title for this one.

Um.

I don't even know what to write about. I usually just start writing and let the poem...come...all over my face.

Alright.



That's not My Wallet
By Blaire Hartman

My wallet is black
Just like the nutsack
Of the man who took my wallet
I'll probably never get it back

He just grabbed me by the ear
And tossed me in the basement
I tried to have a beer...

That's all I'm writing right now.
I actually wrote more than that.
I didn't put the rest in here because I found it far too offensive.
I saved it on this computer guy, though.
It gets a lot funnier, I swear.
I'll write a (Censored) version tomorrow.
Or maybe I won't.

I don't know what to do.

My Weekend Tastes like a Napkin

Friday night--you know, Friday night--I watched some stuff and slept on my bed. After that, I went to see Stephanie. When I got to her dorm, I waited outside, and a guy came out and I was able to get in, and I went up a few levels, and I put my sweatshirt over my head and faced the wall, and she walked by and looked at me and she didn't even know it was me, and then I went after her, and she turned around, and I scared the shit out of her. We watched "The Simpsons" (my sister says she thinks you use quotation marks for TV shows, so if it's wrong, kill her and let me have my name) and ate potatoes and touched each other at Adam's apartment.

I just got done listening to Stomping Ground, an awesome album from Goldfinger. It had been like a year since I last listned to any Goldfinger. I just now started talking to my friend, Justin Schmitt, and he asked me if I've listend to any of the new Goldfinger, and I freaked the fuck out.

Then we went to (censored), and there were a bunch of birds flying around. Then we went back to the dorm-place, where we drank liquids and got on that one guy's screen name and took off our pants and traded shirts. I left, and on my way home, I saw a car behind me, and I was sure he'd come to kill me, so I started writing a poem about it in my head, and then I put some of it down on paper when I got home, and I watched Blow and drank some stuff while I did this, and then I went to bed at about four o' the clock.

I got up at about one o' the clock yesterday. I recorded some stuff on the answering machine with my sister, then I went to the high school, and ran around with Jimmy for a while. And then I spent the rest of the time hanging out with The German and Adam Barlow and Megan and Amanda and Erica and Eric Byrer and my girlfriend Elizabeth Bir, and everyone in the choir room seemed to be taking their pants off, so I started taking mine off, and everyone yelled at me and made me pull them back up, and I was wearing my new Stephanie shirt, and it was really tight on my huge muscles, and everyone kept touching me, and this one hot chick we checking me out in the cafeteria, and she smiled at me, and I made a high-pitched shrieking sound, and I guess she changed her mind, because her face changed, and she walked away. I left at about 10:30. I was walking out to my car, and I saw two guys with my blanket, and the light was on in the car, and the windows were down, and they put my blanket on the hood of the car, and they ran away. I laid myself on the hood of the car and went to sleep, and they came back , and they were Zach Attack and Jon Lee and we talked, and it was cold, so I wrapped myself in my blanket and urinated in the parking lot, and then I went home, and then Jon and Zach came over, and then we went to Taco Bell, and I sat by these people from some school, and they didn't look at me, even though I sat there for a really long time, laughing and carrying on. Then Zach, Jon, and I got up to leave, and they all said bye to me, and we went to Zach's house, and I walked down the street, and peed in the street right in front of Coach Park's house, because there wasn't much light on that part of the street. I walked back to Zach Attack's house, and he showed me swimming pictures, and we watched "Extreme Dodgeball" and then Jon and I left at about 3:15 A.M., and I followed Jon home, and I caught him, and then I went home and took a shower and went to bed.

Today I gotta do some stuff, and I might play football, and I hope that's it.