Yeats, William Butler - Max Wildi (essay date 1955)

Max Wildi (essay date 1955)

SOURCE: "The Influence and Poetic Development of W. B. Yeats," in English Studies; Vol. 36, Nos. 1-6, 1955, pp. 246-53.

[In the following excerpt from an overview of Yeats's work, Wildi asserts that Yeats's poetic influence was reciprocal: even as he helped such writers as Arthur Symons, Thomas Sturge Moore, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden, he was himself helped by them.]

Any poet whose gift survives the first impulse of youth must not only learn to practise the craft of verse as a conscious discipline, he must also be capable of inward renewal. Among modern English writers both D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot each in his own way show this power of transcending their earlier selves; neither of them, however, presents so astonishing an example of repeated rebirth as William Butler Yeats.

Yeats was early recognized as an original and influential poet. In the last ten years before his death younger...

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