Review: The Wild Swans At Coole

The Wild Swans At Coole by W.B. Yeats
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Poetry is not of the genre which I can claim I have read extensively, or heck even decently. The most memorable poem in my head, is The Solitary Reader by William Wordsworth. That too because of a passionate 10th grade English Tutor.

Then there was Gitanjali, the collection of works by Rabindranath Tagore. But those were more spiritual in nature, one's appreciation is more towards the depth of the lyrics rather than its flow.

This year, I've been trying to rectify that shortcoming, but Gods it's not as easy as reading prose.

With literary fiction, you can usually get hooked on the narration. The premise, the characters, what they do, how they do it, what doing it does to them, does to the story, the twists, the turns, the parables, the subtext, the works. With Poetry, I'm drawing a blank.

There is also the case that I might not have chosen necessarily the best work to get started. Some of the entries by Mr. Yeats describe common themes of loss, friendship, melancholy and the likes. But many are phrased in a way that only a proper English gentlemen might gain full appreciation of them. With all the burrows, fords, birches, hedges and whatnot. A really Engh-lish gentlemen.

Hope the rest were able to gain better appreciation of the work, because I didn't, though perhaps through no fault of the source material, but rather the incongruity.

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