Modernism Choice REading

For my choice modernism reading, I chose to read the Yeats poems. The first poem that I read was named The Second Coming. At first, I realized that he was talking about the second coming of Jesus. This goes with the huge dependence on religion that goes along with Modernism. He describes the second coming very gallantly. The second poem that I read was A COAT. In the poem he challenges social norms and asks questions that were not really "necessary". This goes along with Modernism because these things are common in it. The third poem, Sailing to Byzantium we see a little bit of the idea of a lost generation kind of thing. He says things like "dying generation" that make me say that. He talks about them having "unageing" intellect. He also, like the first poem brings in an important religious aspect to the poem whenever he talks about god and the "Holy fire". Finally, in the last poem, Among School Children we see more questioning of social norms and that sort of teenage feeling where we ask questions about everything and why they are they way they are. Also, he mentions class and he gives us something to think about when he says, "are you the leaf, the blossom, or the bole?"




These poems, honestly made no sense to me the first time I read them. I actually read them all all the way through one time, then again then again. I didn't repeat each poem individually because I find that reading the others helps to understand it. It is very hard to lock onto what the author is writing about in these poems because of all the weird language that he uses. These poems did seem a lot more light hearted than Heart of Darkness was. I like HOD more however, these poems were very hard for me.