[lit-ideas] POETRY DAILY'S "POET'S PICK"

Thought you'd enjoy both poem and commentary.

These will be missed after April.  They've done a good job with them 
this year.

TC,

/Steve Cameron, NJ


NATIONAL POETRY MONTH, APRIL 2005
POETRY DAILY'S "POET'S PICK"

Poetry Daily
http://www.poems.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Readers,

Our thanks to PATRICIA FARGNOLI for today's special Poet's Pick:
W.B. YEATS, "A Faery Song"

We are bringing you a special poem each weekday in April as part
of our annual fund-raising campaign and in celebration of National
Poetry Month and our 8th anniversary online. Please help us to
continue our service to you and to poetry by making a tax-deductible
contribution to Poetry Daily! Find out how you can make your
contribution online at http://www.poems.com/support/support.htm
or print out the online form and send it with your check or money
order, payable to "Poetry Daily" in U.S. dollars, to:

The Daily Poetry Association
P.O. Box 1306
Charlottesville, VA 22902-1306
USA

Contributors of $30-$40 may receive our popular Poetry Daily coffee
mug. Contributors of $40 or more may receive our all new PD t-shirt
(Hanes 100% cotton "Beefy T," navy blue, with yellow Poetry Daily logo
front and back). All receive our heartfelt thanks and the thanks of
Poetry Daily readers everywhere!

Enjoy today's special poem!

Diane Boller, Don Selby
Editors
staff@xxxxxxxxx

-------------------------------------------------------

PATRICIA FARGNOLI'S POETRY MONTH PICK, 4/26/05

"A Faery Song"
  W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)

     *Sung by the people of Faery over Diarmuid and Grania, in their
      bridal sleep under a Cromlech.*


We who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told:

Give to these children, new from the world,
Silence and love;
And the long dew-dropping hours of the night,
And the stars above:

Give to these children, new from the world,
Rest far from men.
Is anything better, anything better?
Tell us it then:

Us who are old, old and gay,
O so old!
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told.


*Patricia Fargnoli comments:

Yeats, in *The Celtic Twilight*, wrote: "I have desired, like every
artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant and
significant things of the marred and clumsy world, and to show in a
vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who
would look where I bid them."

In his early (1881), haunting, "Faery Song," Yeats bids them look under
a cromlech (an ancient Celtic stone standing monument) to where Grania
and Diarmuid, of Irish legend, sleep on their bridal night - a time of
peace and  fulfillment away from the stress of the world.

In the legend, Grania, the daughter of King Cormac, famous for her
astonishing beauty, is promised to Fion MacCool, a powerful warrior/
leader. Instead, she falls in love with one of his soldiers, Diarmuid.
The soldier is loyal to Fion, but Grania casts a spell on him and they
run away out of Tara and marry. In "A Faery Song," they sleep,
peacefully away from the conflict they've left behind, and blessed by
the song of the faeries and its siren call to the world of faery.

I've chosen this poem because it sends me back to the time when I was
a child pouring over *Silver Pennies* and *More Silver Pennies*, those
two beautiful little books of children's poems, many of them about
fairies, that I credit with giving me my love of poetry. And also
because, as in Yeats's famous poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree,"
the theme is a searching for peace and release against a troubled
world... a theme that resonates with me in my own troubled world...
and perhaps with you too?

But what about that provocative question the fairies ask: "what could
be better?" Perhaps, I want to answer, "what could be better" than
escape to another world, is to stay awake and alive to this one,
allowing ourselves to experience both its trouble and its wonder.


PATRICIA FARGNOLI's latest book is *Duties of the Spirit* (Tupelo Press,
2005). Her first book, *Necessary Light* (Utah State University Press,
1999) won the May Swenson Book Award. A Macdowell Fellow, she's
published widely in such journals at *Poetry*, *Mid-American Review*,
and *Ploughshares*. She lives in Walpole, New Hampshire and teaches
poetry privately and in The Keene State College Lifelong Learning
Program.

**Don't forget! -- If you enjoy our regular features and special
events like this one, please join Patricia Fargnoli in supporting Poetry
Daily by making a tax-deductible contribution. For more information
and for secure online contributions:
http://www.poems.com/support/support.htm
---

------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html

Other related posts: