The Poetry of W. B. Yeats

By: William Butler Yeats

Narrated by: William Butler Yeats, Siobhan McKenna

A wonderful selection of Yeats' finest work, read by the author himself along with Siobhan McKenna and others.

©2009 Saland Publishing (P)2009 Saland Publishing

A glorious listen.

How wonderful an experience to spend a couple of hours feeling the passion that burned within an old man’s mind and heart.

Daybreak and a candle-end.

one of the poets I talk to the most

Yeats wasn't easy or relatable to me as a young college woman learning about the early modernist poets whose work followed his, who owed so much to him really, and whose poetry was "trendier," to put it crassly. But over the years Yeats has grown deeply significant to me. He defers to Place, to Nature, to all the old stories, and to Woman (My appreciation of him didn't lessen !! when I discovered that our mother was a descendant of Bree emigrants from Sligo). And Yeats' recorded voice is in this edition, in the form of two recordings: "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" has been beautifully remastered; and I hadn't yet heard him performing"The Fiddler of Dooney." All the other readers are excellent--I can guess at a few in the mix--and I do wish they all might have been credited here by name. Listen to this book. It's that troll under the mountain with his pot of rocks and gold.

Nice production. but there are duplicate tracks

Archival recordings held up well. I enjoyed the recitations. I can't say I appreciated having each read twice. At first, I thought they were alternate readings but the times were exactly the same. Did a lot of fastforwarding. Other than that, I liked it very much.

Good but with frustrations

The poetry is lovely and hearing it read with Irish accents a treat. These are clearly archival recordings so the sound quality is not brilliant in some of them, but that is balanced out by skill of the readings, and knowing that in many cases you are hearing the author reading.

What is frustrating is that the titles are not given. It is fine with the very well known poems, but for most I didn't know which poem it actually was.

There are also a lot of repetitions. Having to keep skipping the second poem is annoying as I usually listen while doing other things or walking. It also makes the length of the book deceptive.

But despite those frustrations it was a good listen.

Blurry

It should have been inspiring to hear both Yeats and McKenna doing these readings, but the sound quality was terrible. Find another version.

Many tracks are duplicates

Great readings but they repeat the same poem and same reader back to back most often to extend length of entirety. Very annoying.