Month: February 2002

On the Road with Kerouac and the Beat Generation

Diane McCormick and I will be spending the week discussing Kerouac’s On the Road. We’re starting today with a background on Kerouac and the Beat Movement. Since Diane enjoys doing this, and I don’t, she has graciously consented to writing this . Enjoy.

When Jack Kerouac put on his huaraches and walked out of Lowell, Massachusetts, to hitchhike to Denver, I was nine years old. When On the Road, the story of his adventures was published, I was a sophomore at the University of Oregon.

If I recall correctly my reaction to the book was how could anyone live like that, existing on apple pie and ice cream, no clean sheets, no baths, no money, sleeping with strangers, smoking cigarettes and drinking–OK, cigarettes and beer, maybe–but the rest of it? Yuk! I realize now my reaction was that of a middle class college sophomore who never considered any other way of life, had never been out of the Willamette Valley, had figured joining the establishment some day was a worthy goal– and I married an Army officer to prove it.

Re-reading the book this month still produces the Yuk factor, but that is tempered with a wistf ulness–Gee, maybe I could had been a little more adventurous. Sal, Dean, and the guys seemed to have so much fun, at least in the beginning. Then I remember my last trip to New York, business class on American (I’m a Frequent Flyer miles junkie), tickets to Broadway plays, drinks at the Waldorf, dinner at Sardis–no, Kerouac and I would still not be best buds.

But I do recognize and admire his tenacity and his belief in himself as a writer. From there comes his influence and the huge debt writers who have come after owe him. He offered another way of viewing the world and whether I could ever join him is irrelevant. I do appreciate him.

If you want to influence others, be the first with an idea

Just how creative Kerouac was and how much of another way of thinking he offered the thoughtful public can be see n by reviewing who else was writing in the fifties: Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, C.P. Snow, Bertrand Russell, Robert Penn Warren, Nevil Shute, Tennessee Williams, Conrad Richter, J.D. Salinger, Herman Wouk, William Faulkner, Graham Greene, James Jones,Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Dylan Thomas, Agatha Christie, John Steinbeck, Edna Ferber, Thomas B. Costain, Ian Fleming, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Leon Uris, Thornton Wilder, William Golding, J.R.R. Tolkien, Albert Camus, William Faulkner, Nevil Shute,C. Day Lewis, Iris Murdoch, Eugene O’Neil, William Saroyan, Gore Vidal, William Inge, Dr. Seuss, Ayn Rand, Bernard Malamud, Leon Uris, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, James Thurber, Robert Penn Warren, Gunter Grass,Vance Packard, Allen Drury, John Updike, James Michener, Philip Roth,Lillian Hellmann, John O’Hara, and Harper Lee. This was the literary establishment from whom Kerouac would break. One has to admire his stamina.

In the first paragraph of On the Road Sal Paradise, the narrator of the novel and Kerouac himself, speaks of his feeling that everything was dead. I venture to say that we were all feeling a little dead. Americans had just come from an economic depression ( my family lost the Willamette Valley homestead awarded in 1850; my dad had to drop out of college) to World War II, to the witch hunts of Joseph McCarthy. Neither do other notables of the 50s bring joy: Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, and though we didn’t know it then, Fidel Castro. In the 50s the hydrogen bomb was developed, North Korea invaded South Korea, the U.S. recognized Vietnam and began sending supplies and arms with instructions; the McCarran Act to restrict Communist infiltration was passed. Miltown tranquilized us. In 1952 16,000 Germans escaped from East to West Berlin. The birth control pill and antihistamines were marketed. Dwight D. Eisenhower became president; Elizabeth II became queen. In 1953 a link was proved between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. It was not an easy time. And yet most of us knuckled down, went to school and to work, married, cooked dinner, got jobs. Kerouac showed us there was another way. There are days when I kick myself for not joining his Beat Generation.

"I’m not a Beatnik, I’m a Catholic."
Jack Kerouac

Under the influence of William S. Burroughs and Neal Cassady, American author Jack Kerouac, 1922-69, became the popular banner carrier for the Beat Generation which originated in the 1950s. Kerouac described himself as “actually not ‘beat’” but a “strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic.” And don’t call him a Beatnik. He deplored the evolution from Beat to Beatnik.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to a Catholic middle class family (his father was a printer and businessman), Jack had an early private Catholic education at St. Joseph’s Parochial School and attended Columbia University on a football scholarship, but he quit school his sophomore year to join the Merchant Marine.

He appeared to be close to his mother throughout his life, eventually living with her in Northport, Long Island, and then St. Petersburg, Florida. He also had a sister and a brother who died at the age of nine.

He had said his final plans were to “live in a hermitage in the woods, continue writing quietly into old age with mellow hopes of Paradise which comes to everybody anyway.”

One can only hope he found the Paradise he searched for. Jack would be dead from complications of alcoholism at the age of 47.

At age 25 he began his journey from New York to California and back again several times, writing about his adventures in his most famous novel, On The Road which wasn’t published until 1957. His novel The Town and the City was publis hed in 1950; he had written his first novel at the age of nine. In Lowell he was influenced by Sebastian Sampas, a local poet who was killed in WW II. Interestingly, Jack’s third wife was also a Sampas, perhaps a sister. He was also impressed with the adventurous Jack London and admitted to be influenced by Saroyan and Hemingway and later Tom Wolfe.

Kerouac published 19 works in the years between 1950-69.

While he wrote and waited for publishers to recognize him, he did just about everything to support himself when he could not borrow or live off his friends. Most of his work involved working on ships, and railroads, but he also was a soda jerk, cotton picker, forest service fire lookout, and construction laborer.

On the Road bro ught notoriety and success. Now he was the leader of a literary movement and a way of life he thought was a passing fad. He was 35, older, wiser, sadder, and asked to be the young guru of a nihilistic life style built on drugs, sex, life on the road. He wasn’t the same man anymore, not so innocent and much more intelligent than the narrator of the novel, young Sal Paradise. Critics scoffed at the Beat Generation of writers, which must have hurt tremendously. One can say a lot about the work of Kerouac, some of it not very encouraging, but I think he took his work very seriously and honestly believed in his words. The rejection along with the fame–again the duality so apparent in Kerouac’s life– led him to alcohol (although his father was an alcoholic, too). He abandoned Buddhism, becoming dependent and irrational. One biographer likens Kerouac to Kurt Coba n, the Seattle musician, who also truly suffered.

Kerouac’s last years were spent living with his mother in Northport, Long Island where he continued playing a game of “baseball,” a card game he created, drinking cheap sweet wine like Thunderbird, the winos’ drink of choice. He remained a Catholic although his Roman faith remained colored by Buddhism.

A few years before his death he married his third wife, Stella Stampas; the first two marriages had lasted only a few months. Stella, a childhood acquaintance from Lowell, is described as “maternalistic and older.” Her function seems to have been as a caregiver to Kerouac’s aging mother.

About this time in his forties Kerouac became a political conservative, supporting the war in Vietnam and befriending William F. Buckley. Wouldn’t you love to hear those conversations?

"You are a genius all the time."
Kerouac

The word itself seems to have come from Burroughs’ as sociation with the street hustler Herbert Huncke who used the word “beat” to mean down and out, as in ”dead beat.” Burroughs passed the word to Ginsberg and Kerouac. Kerouac liked the word but thought of a “beat” as someone with a certain spirituality as in beatific, discussing his definition in the Playboy article “The Origins of the Beat Generation,” June 1959. In another interview he described it as a “kind of furtiveness,” an “inner knowledge.” The term was used to describe a vision, not an idea. Through time misunderstandings took place and the word evolved into a label for anyone living a bohemian life, rebelling against the norms of social manners and decency.

The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen is credited with coining the phrase “Beatnik” after the 1958 launching of the Russian satellite “sputnik.” He appeared a little disgusted with the Beatniks, saying they were only beat when it “comes to work.” They were quite capabl e of talking, writing, attending parties.

So what is the fascination with this clique who established the Beat Generation? For me it’s voyeurism, pure and simple. They lived a life, albeit a brief one, being careless, goofy, selfish, destructive and professing to love it. I never would have been allowed into their inner circle. I’m way too up tight. I eat my vegetables and quit smoking a long time ago. But there is an attraction to their lives and like the attraction to the old south, it probably existed only for rare moments when their bellies were full, their feet were dry, and they had gas and cigarette money for the next journey.

The Beat writers saw themselves on a quest for beauty and truth, allying themselves with mysticism. The works themselves were to be streams of consciousness written down spontaneously and not to be altered or edited. “If you change it…the gig is shot,” said Kerouac.

The Beat Movement began at the end of W.W.II at Columbia Univ ersity and Times Square although San Francisco often claims it and shouted an irresistible need to be free from societal conformity. The flow and rhythm of the Beat writing took much of its inspiration from the music of the day, from the black jazz clubs that blew and wailed their improvisations late into the night.

Beat writing is about being alive and living in a moment more innocent than angry, being on the road, conversing about life with close friends, being free and unafraid. It is not about being violent. It was later that the Beats became Beatniks who threatened mayhem.

Interest in the Beat Generation, the members and their works, continues. Many biographies, new editions, criticisms were published into the late 1990s. Check Amazon.com for interesting material. Some of the really good stuff is hard to find or expensive. Carolyn Cassady’s Heart Beat now sells for $198. Holy Goof, a biography of Neal Cassady by Plummer, is out of print but may be purchased used from Amazon.

The Beat Generation was peopled with interesting, some outrageous, personalities. There is Jack Kerouac, of course, the writer chosen by the others to be the leader, the novelist inspired by Neal Cassady’s free style letters. Allen Ginsberg, the poet, and Lucien Carr met Kerouac at Columbia. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet and businessman, alive today, owner of City Lights Book Store in San Francisco joined the group in the early days. Herbert Huncke, the Times Square hustler who passed the word “beat” to William S. Burroughs, the older brilliant addict from downtown were members. Neal Cassady is often named as the inspiration for Kerouac, the icon of the movement, the street cowboy from Denver who remained a friend but never profited from their success. He married many times, settling with Carolyn Cassady in Los Gatos. In the 60s Cassady struck out on the road with Ken Kesey. He died in St. Miguel de Allende, Mexico, after falling asleep counting railroad ties to the next town. He lay outside all night and did not recover from the exposure. John Clellon Holmes, novelist, Gary Snyder, the Zen poet who influenced Kerouac with Buddhist religion, Chandler Brossard, Kenneth Rexroth, and Gregory Corso were all charter members. Walt Whitman would have been accepted into the Beat Writers’ Group along with the Oregon writer Ken Kesey

Yeats Odds and Ends

I felt complimented, or perhaps that’s complemented, that Visible Darkness chose to comment on what I had written about Yeats in the last few days. I’ve always felt that differing opinions, at least well-informed, differing opinions, are a vital part of learning. That’s one of the reasons I invited Diane to join me on commenting on various authors.

That said, I think Visible Darkness sees Yeats from a slightly different perspective than I do. Part of this difference probably comes from where each of us was originally taught. Visible Darkness rightly points out that Yeats has to be seen as link between the Victorian poetry and modern poetry. I was taught at the U.W. under Roethke’s influence, though, and it’s obvious Roethke saw himself as a direct descendent of Yeats. Yeats was seen as a link from past romanticism to modern romanticism. Modern (well, at least moderately modern), confessional poets like Roethke were obviously influenced by Yeats, though they seemed to owe less to older romantic poets like Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, or Shelley.

Visible Darkness also saw the Tower symbol in a different light than I did, and I found his explanation of art practiced for the sake of art and art as an exploration of life itself enlightening.

I still, however, tend to see the tower as a symbol of “reason,” reason as opposed to “intuition.” The rational thinking of scientists and scholars is continually opposed to the inspiration or intuition of the artist in Yeats’ poetry, as it was in almost all forms of romanticism. The tower is a symbol I will need to re-examine and come back to later. Maybe next time around I’ll argue that the tower symbolizes Yeats’ view that art should be practiced as an act of life, not removed from the world.

I have to admit that scholarship at times can lead to new insight into a poet’s work. For instance, I wish I had read Diane’s biographical information about Plath’s father before I discussed the symbolism of the bees last week. Generally, though, my discussion of poems tends to reflect the fact that I took almost all my poetry classes from practicing poets, not from critics. None of those classes required much scholarship, per se, but they did demand a close reading of the poems themselves and an attempt to relate them to your own views. One of my favorite quotes from those days was David Waggoner’s reply when a new student would ask what a poem “meant.” (This is a paraphrase of what he said. I wouldn’t want to offend any Poetry Gods by misquoting David.) People don’t understand their father, their mother, or their brother, but they have to understand a poem. In other words, a poem is a living thing; you don’t have to understand it completely to appreciate and admire it. I treat every poem I meet that way.

Maybe that’s why I particularly like this poem by Yeats:

THE SCHOLARS

BALD heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way?

And, no, my head isn’t bald, nor is it particularly respectable, a common complaint among respectable ex-students.

I also tend to most admire poems that follow Yeats’ “five/ That make the Muses sing.”

THOSE IMAGES

WHAT if I bade you leave
The cavern of the mind?
There’s better exercise
In the sunlight and wind.

I never bade you go
To Moscow or to Rome.
Renounce that drudgery,
Call the Muses home.

Seek those images
That constitute the wild
The lion and the virgin,
The harlot and the child.

Find in middle air
An eagle on the wing,
Recognise the five
That make the Muses sing.

Somehow “The Hawk” reminds me of that great American romantic poet, Walt Whitman, whose “yawp” still transcends the ages:

THE HAWK

‘CALL down the hawk from the air;
Let him be hooded or caged
Till the yellow eye has grown mild,
For larder and spit are bare,
The old cook enraged,
The scullion gone wild.’

‘I will not be clapped in a hood,
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,
Now I have learnt to be proud
Hovering over the wood
In the broken mist
Or tumbling cloud.’

‘What tumbling cloud did you cleave,
Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind,
Last evening? that I, who had sat
Dumbfounded before a knave,
Should give to my friend
A pretence of wit.’

And when you get my age, a poem like “The Wheel” seems more relevant than it did when I was in college.

The Wheel

THROUGH winter-time we call on spring,
And through the spring on summer call,
And when abounding hedges ring
Declare that winter’s best of all;
And after that there’s nothing good
Because the spring-time has not come
Nor know that what disturbs our blood
Is but its longing for the tomb.

Yeats’ Lapis Lazuli

At my age “Lapis Lazuli” poem doesn’t seem quite as remarkable as it did when I first read it in college, but it still provides a nice perspective on life. It somehow seems even more appropriate in the midst of America’s war on terrorism and our attempts to destroy evil, for it seems like it is going to be a long “war:”

LAPIS LAZULI
(For Harry Clifton)

I have heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out,
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That’s Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet they, should the last scene be there,
The great stage curtain about to drop,
If worthy their prominent part in the play,
Do not break up their lines to weep.
They know that Hamlet and Lear are gay;
Gaiety transfiguring all that dread.
All men have aimed at, found and lost;
Black out; Heaven blazing into the head:
Tragedy wrought to its uttermost.
Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages,
And all the drop-scenes drop at once
Upon a hundred thousand stages,
It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

On their own feet they came, or on shipboard,
Camel-back, horse-back, ass-back, mule-back,
Old civilisations put to the sword.
Then they and their wisdom went to rack:
No handiwork of Callimachus,
Who handled marble as if it were bronze,
Made draperies that seemed to rise
When sea-wind swept the corner, strands;
His long lamp-chimney shaped like a stem
Of a slender palm, stood but a day;
All things fall and are built again,
And those that build them again are gay.

Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in lapis lazuli,
Over them flies a long-legged bird,
A symbol of longevity;
The third, doubtless a serving-man,
Carries a musical instrument.

Every discoloration of the stone,
Every accidental crack or dent,
Seems a water-course or an avalanche,
Or lofty slope where it still snows
Though doubtless plum or cherry-branch
Sweetens the little half-way house
Those Chinamen climb towards, and I
Delight to imagine them seated there;
There, on the mountain and the sky,
On all the tragic scene they stare.
One asks for mournful melodies;
Accomplished fingers begin to play.
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

Surely if one is to believe the media in the last few months, the war on terrorism, America’s noble attempt to eliminate evil, is the most important thing in the world. President Bush tours the world promoting support for his war. And here I sit, writing about a Yeats poem.

Everyone, without exception, performs in “their [own] tragic play.” Every one of us has “aimed at, found and lost out,” which, of course, also explains why plays like Hamlet and King Lear remain popular. All the plays in the world cannot grow or shrink the personal tragedy.

Civilizations, just like individuals, suffer tragedies. History shows that all civilizations are “put to the sword,” and most, if not all, of what is remarkable in those civilizations disappears with the civilizations. Amazingly, blessedly, those “that build them again are gay,” unaffected by all the tragedy that has preceded them.

And then, almost as if to suggest that not everything is lost from the past, Yeats introduces an ancient artwork where two Chinamen and a servant climbing up a mountain to a house are carved into a piece of lapis lazuli. Each accident that has happened to the artwork is envisioned from within the artwork as a water-course of avalanche. These Chinese survey the “tragic scenes” of destruction, and “Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,/ Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.”

This stanza seems to lend itself to two equally valid interpretations. One is that art transcends time. In “Sailing to Byzantium” the narrator says once he dies he wants body to take a “form such as Grecian goldsmiths make” because in doing so he would finally transcend time. These two Chinamen have done precisely this. Another equally valid interpretation, though, would be that we, like the Chinese gentlemen, should look on such tragedies with gay eyes. To do otherwise is to give the tragedy more than its due.

I think it is this kind of objective way of looking at the world that most draws me to art. It allows me to stand outside life for a moment and look in on it, almost as if I have, but for a moment, transcended my own existence.

Yeats’ Dialogue of Self and Soul

I’m a little hesitant to try to interpret a poem as difficult and as important as “A Dialogue of Self and Soul” because I am no Yeats’ scholar nor have I done any scholarly research on the poem, quite possibly because I don’t like scholarly research. I just like reading and thinking about poetry.

However, I believe Yeats is quite possibly the greatest poet of the 20th Century, and I know he has been one of my favorite poets since I was in college. I have read his Autobiography, his Collected Plays, and his Collected Poems several times. After reading in Visible Darkness that Yeats wrote a book called A Vision, I knew that was another book I’m going to have to run down, though I doubt I’m going to pay $1,200 dollars for it.

Simply put, Yeats has helped me to discover what I believe in life, and avoiding him because of personal inadequacies would thus defeat the purpose of my blogging. That said, one of my very favorite Yeats poems is:

A DIALOGUE OF SELF AND SOUL

I

My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?

My Self. The consecrated blade upon my knees
Is Sato’s ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
From some court-lady’s dress and round
The wooden scabbard bound and wound,
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn.

My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And intellect its wandering
To this and that and t’other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery
Heart’s purple-and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night,
And claim as by a soldier’s right
A charter to commit the crime once more.

My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known—
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue’s a stone.

Ii

My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;

The finished man among his enemies?
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what’s the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?

I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action, or in thought;
Measure the lot to forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

Personally, I think Part II is the heart of this poem and is by far my favorite part, but I’m not going to presume to separate them. Part I does serve as a prelude to Part II, though to my thinking Part II would stand as an outstanding poem by itself.

In the first stanza the Soul calls the reader to the tower of learning where “the star,” the most distant part of our universe, “marks the hidden pole.” The soul seems to be talking about the contemplation of eternity. On the other hand, the poem itself seems to imply that the soul’s goal is so vague as to be virtually unknowable. “Thought,” as represented by the tower, cannot distinguish “darkness from the soul.” In a later poem Yeats says the tower is “half dead at the top.” If we see the tower as an individual, as a source of knowledge, this would seem to imply that there is no more original thought there. If, on the other hand, we see the tower as a phallic symbol, it has become impotent.

In the second stanza, Self says it holds an ancient Japanese blade wrapped in a piece of embroidered silk. As pointed out in the next stanza, these seem to be symbols of war and love. The sword can stand for the blood that has been spilled, while the dress seems to have been given to the samurai out of love. The sword also seems to represent self-discovery, “a looking glass,” where man discovers his penchant for violence. The silken embroidery represents art, one thing many romanticists felt transcended time.

Soul argues that these are foolish symbols, and that if imagination would just “scorn the earth” (perhaps, instead, contemplate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin or meditate on its navel) and intellect would quit wandering from topic to topic, then together they could deliver us from the “crime of death and birth,” suggesting a Buddhist-like escape from the cycle of eternal rebirth.

In the fourth stanza, Self sets purple flowers the color of the heart and the sword, with its implied blood, against the darkness that the tower represents. Passion, in and of itself, Yeats seems to suggest can make life meaningful. We shouldn’t try to avoid life and death; we should live it passionately.

Soul finally argues that when intellect and imagination are focused on philosophy that intellect no longer knows Is from Ought or Knower from Known and that is like ascending to Heaven. It’s obvious that Yeats is a Romantic and believes in the power of intuition, not rational arguments.

Part II of the poem is spoken entirely by the Self. Luckily, it needs little explanation. It is a celebration of life itself, though a rather strange celebration, no doubt, by some people’s standards. No matter how miserable our life has been, the narrator argues, if we follow it to its source, measure the lot, and forgive ourselves for our mistakes, we will transcend those mistakes and become “blest.”

Part of the power of the poem comes from our realization that, we, too, have suffered most of these indignities. Who hasn’t felt the awkwardness of childhood, or the fears of becoming a man or woman, and fear of enemies who would have our job? How can we escape the hurtful image that malicious acquaintances project onto us at different times of life?

The power of the poem, of course, also comes from the power of the description, not the mere intellectual argument. Lines like … if it be life to pitch/ Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch, / A blind man battering blind men” are the kinds of lines that can stay with you for years. Equally amazing is how these lines can be transformed into the optimistic lines that the poem ends with: “We must laugh and we must sing, / We are blest by everything, / Everything we look upon is blest.” Yeats must have been blessed by the blarney stone to compose lines this magnificent.