Author: Jarad Sassone-McHugh

Tollund Man

Grauballe Man

The bog people are preserved so well due to low temperatures, very little oxygen, and acidic water that maintains the skin and hair (“his rusted hair”), but erodes the bone, as can be seen in their deflated looking bodies.

It has been suggested that the Tollund Man was executed by hanging as a sacrifice to appease the gods, which adds another interesting level to Heaney’s poem about him (“Bridegroom to the goddess”) as a possible commentary on the effects of religious extremism in Ireland.

The Grauballe Man, though executed by a slit throat (“The chin is a visor / raised above the vent / of his slashed throat”) instead of hanging, is also assumed to have been killed as a sacrifice.

Map of Denmark that marks Tollund and Grauballe

While reading “Politics” the final poem we read by Yeats, I was reminded of something Doggett said earlier in the semester: that we read Yeats for his poetry, not his politics. The speaker wonders how he can focus on politics when so distracted by a woman, “How can I, that girl standing there, / My attention fix… / on…politics.” The speaker seems to deny the importance of politics in favor of romance: “There’s a politician / That has both read and thought / And maybe what they say is true / Of war and war’s alarms, / But O that I were young again / And held her in my arms.”

This poem can be considered problematic from a political point of view; people should not simply ignore “war and war’s alarms” for the sake of romance. Actually, much of Yeats’ politics (in regards to women, class, etc.) that we have read in his poetry prove problematic. However, I think there is a time and place to be politically conscious, and a separate time and place to indulge in romance and art and that place is poetry. Yeats may have been right in some respect that people can lose their artistic beauty to political fanaticism, like Maud. If you get too caught up in the politics of poetry, you might lose out on its aesthetic beauty. Though, that is not to say that politics in poetry should be ignored. Rather, I think political criticism and aesthetic appreciation should be held separate.

Here’s a link to a recording of Yeats reading “The Lake Isle of Inisfree”

Yeats’ own reading of this poem is really interesting in that it definitely changes how I first thought of the poem. Initially, “Innisfree” sounded like a homage to romanticism with beautiful nature imagery and even an allusion to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden with the line “Nine bean rows will I have there.” However, Yeats’ reading drones on almost as if he is grieving, which would make sense since he wrote “Innisfree” in 1888, during his early period when he was young and idealistic, and this recording is from 1935, closer to the end of his life and after his transition into a much more bitter and disillusioned phase. Moreover, it’s worth pointing out that Yeats was inspired to write “Innisfree” by a water advertisement, which is like the total antithesis of what you would consider romantic. How did this recording change your reading?

So I just read Yeats’ “Never give all the Heart” and thought it was an interesting play on the Shakespearean sonnet. In this poem Yeats addresses the performative aspect of attraction, and love. The speaker is wary of his object of attraction due to his assertion in the first few lines to “Never give all the heart, for love / Will hardly seem worth thinking of / To passionate women if it seem / Certain” (1-4). In other words, the speaker thinks that women don’t like guys who are too desperate. The speaker then reiterates, “O never give the heart outright, / For they… / Have given their hearts up to the play” (8-10), meaning that love is a performance and a game. Next he asks, “And who could play it well enough / If deaf and dumb and blind with love?”  Love and desire depend on a performance, but if you’re actually in love you can’t play the game well enough to attain your love. Though, the point I want to make is that this performance idea becomes interesting in the context of a Shakespearean sonnet, which in my opinion is the most performative poetic form due to its long history and staple in english poetry. The speaker recognizes that love needs to be “played well enough” to  attain the woman of his desire. Similarly, poetry must be “played well enough” to be good poetry, and, as with love, trying too hard comes off as desperate and no one’s attracted to that. The poem is written in sonnet form as an ironic example of poetry that tries too hard to play well enough and comes off as desperate and obvious. This also explains the rhyme scheme’s (AABBCCDDEEAAGG) divergence from the typical ABABCDCDEFEFGG, as a lame attempt to mix up the sonnet in order to play it well.