POETS Day: Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats

Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I think it might be self-satisfying to be like Cher or Madonna and only have a Christian name (and yes, I was intentionally trying to be humorous) because everybody just knows. “Madonna would like a table for six,” is rarely followed by a receptionist asking for a last name. If I say Prince you don’t think of Andrew unless… let’s just leave that alone. In the modern world it’s cool to be reassured about why you are self-assured. Being the embodiment of a name does that.

Sapho and Ovid get the advantage of antiquity because after time they were the only Ovid and Sapho that anybody remembers. They did have last names back then, but they also had no social media timelines and an abundance of obscurity. You had to really stand out to be known and one name would likely suffice. Ask Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. Of course, we know him by the shorter Caligula so maybe he was of the Cher set, at least for his time. If I say Bede, you don’t ask if I mean the venerable one. Some people grasp marketing and the time was right.

Come to think of it, Jesus only had a Christian name.

As impressive and ego stroking as it might be to throw around a one word moniker with a “You know who I am,” attitude, the initialed people seem cooler to me.

P.G. Wodehouse might not get a table within host slapping distance at the Oscars but the mention of his name commands respect. P.J. O’Rourke, W.E.B. Du Bois, J.R.R. Tolkien, A.N. Roquelaure, C.S. Lewis, P.D. James, P. Diddy, J.K. Rowling, T.S. Eliot. That would be one hell of a dinner party. Initials not stitched into an Oxford shirt chest pocket are just cool.

This week’s poet is William Butler Yeats, better known as W.B. Yeats, and he has an amazing poem about a Greek lady getting improbably raped by supernatural fowl but… let’s just leave that alone. Instead let’s focus on a different poem of his about reclaiming relevance and purpose.

First let’s honor the POET’S Day mission and get you out of work because when we say Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday, we mean it. Or I mean it. It’s just me saying it, but I get a sense of organizational support so I feel okay with “we.”

I’m thinking tetanus.

I don’t suggest actually faking the symptoms of tetanus. I’m counting on the fact that nobody but me has any idea when they had their last tetanus shot. I remember because I stepped on a nail when picking up a bunch of pizzas for a Super Bowl party so I know that if I’m approaching a Super Bowl that ends in a V I need to go get what I suppose we now call a jab. Most people weren’t so lucky to have had a rusty nail go through a pair of Bass Weejuns so they can experience the wonder of flopping on the ground with mozzarella, cardboard, and whatever toppings were flung about in the resulting unmanliness.

This week we prey on your supervisor’s uncertainty about their own medical maintenance.

All you need is a band-aid.

Start talking about how you cut yourself and ask a few people you work with about their last tetanus shot early in the day. You are unsure about how long it takes for symptoms set in but you cut yourself that morning and you just can’t remember when you last took care of things. They don’t either. No one remembers their last shot unless it was yesterday. Leave a web page about how often you should get a booster open on your laptop where people can see it.

Eventually, you’re just worried and the site said you need treatment within ten hours if you aren’t properly immunized and you called and the local pharmacy will shoot you up if you get there in the next few. Nobody is going to stop you.

You are free to begin the weekend and hit the bar to watch spring baseball and have an ice cold can of beer that was opened by the bartender since you don’t want to cut yourself on the metal pop top because let’s face it. You have no idea when you got your last tetanus shot.

Cormac McCarthy was not a single name guy or a vastly superior initials guy, but he was name conscious. His real name was Charlie McCarthy and fans of Candace Bergen might remember that her father was a renowned radio ventriloquist. Seriously. The puppet that he voiced was named Charlie McCarthy too, and the soon to be Cormac didn’t like the comparison, so he changed his name. He could have endeavored to be C.J. McCarthy, but Cormac is pretty cool.

I met an author once and he was telling me how in certain circles he was famous, but for the most part he could putter around the grocery store unacosted because it was a small set that knew who he was. He goes to a convention and he’s fawned over, but he can escape and it’s over. He called it “famulous.” It was a fabulous form of fame that bent towards his desire of attention at the moment.

I bet Cormac got that too. In certain cercles he was Cher or Madonna. If you say Cormac at a writer’s workshop nobody says “Cormac who?”

“That is no country for old men.” begins Yeats in “Sailing to Byzantium.” It is a stark statement that breaks before the line is over. “The young” comes next before the indentation. It’s a brutal caesura because it tells us first that there is a “That” country and distances him from the place he’s describing before giving pause and pointing out that there are young and he is not among them. I’ve read a lot about this poem and critics better than me are almost unanimous in pointing that for the reasons I mentioned, not original observations of mine, the opening is brilliant.

Cormac would take that opening line and title a wonderful novel after it. It wasn’t his best book, but he didn’t have a bad book.

I bring him up because even when I read the initialed Yeats work it was McCarthy that elaborated on the ideas presented.

The author has watched things grow and die. He has outlasted almost all he knows and looks to the past for what endured, what impacted the world, and he’s lost as to his place. He recognizes that he’s gained perspective and/or wisdom, but wonders how or if he can pass what he’s learned on to others. He’s not resigned to passing. He wants to know why what from the past lives and why he has passed so many fleeting presents.

It’s despairing hope.

Sailing to Byzantium

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

***

My suspicion is that Mark Knopfler’s “Sailing to Philadelphia” and Faulkner’s The Green Bough are inspired by this poem, but I’m in a hotel in Fairhope and my copy of Faulkner’s poetry is in my kitchen in Birmingham and apparently per an annoying phone search none of his stuff is online. It may not be because I’m thinking as shallowly as title similarities. As to Knopfler, I’m in a Hilton just a golf game away from Mobile Bay and we are under a billiondy billion tornado warnings and the internet is gone and I’m just done because the phone is for wordle and twitter and taking pictures of food and I need my laptop back to look into anything in depth. I’m booked tomorrow with little time to mess around and plumb Dire Straits fan sites for hints of where he may have headed when solo and I’d have to sort the stuff he might have gotten from Yeats and what he’s definitely gotten from Pynchon. If you know anything about either Faulkner or Knopfler and this poem I’d love some information in the comments.

Y’all enjoy the weekend. I’ve got reservations tomorrow at a place known for charcuterie so you know I’m good.

Tornado’s aside, I’m impressed by Fairhope.