Reading Yeats, “He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes”

To my surprise, it’s “Read Aloud Day” world-wide for anyone wanting to read a book or poem aloud. I am reading my favorite poem from Yeats’ poetry book that I’d mentioned I’d been practicing, reading it as a calming listen and to highlight how Yeats wrote sound into his poems, through rhymes and alliteration, in a skillful way so the sound illuminates the poem’s inner meaning (accent unintentional 😊). Along with sound, I find Yeats’ poems at their best when they’re created with vivid, unusual, and/or pleasing imagery:

From @jadenicolebeals YouTube channel on art and writing for this blog from the Poems Read Aloud playlist. My side channel for yoga is @jadenicoleyoga; it’s been on a yoga dance roll…

Enjoy the listen,

💕—Jade

Text of the poem: https://americanliterature.com/author/william-butler-yeats/poem/he-gives-his-beloved-certain-rhymes

My Thoughts: I read aloud the poem “He Gives His Beloved Certain Rhymes,” and I already had the gold hairpin when I read his poem (but maybe only a few weeks prior.) 😂I didn’t put my hair up because Yeats said so, the “imperative” in poetry is really well done here, which means that stating something as “command” in grammar can add complexity to mainly even sentences in some literature or poetry. I liked his work, found it most alive in his imagist poems with vivid dreamlike characters or scenes and of course natural scenes and mystical beings. Yeats was definitely a romance poet and a musician poet with his sound and music being the most memorably moving. I love long poems too yet I found him at best in shorter poems.