DDCPoetry

Tim Ellison is my guest blogger for today and he does a fine job analyzing "The Fascination of What's Difficult" by William Butler Yeats.   Normally I read only contemporary poetry on Tim Reads Poetry , but today I’m going to take advantage of the freedom writing for TheRetailMFAer gives me and take on one of my old favorites, W.B. Yeats’ “The Fascination of What’s Difficult”. In Helen Vendler’s great book about Yeats, Our Secret Discipline , she basically describes this poem as a frustrated sonnet. I think you’ll see what she means. Here’s “The Fascination of What’s Difficult”: The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent    Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt    That must, as if it had not holy blood    Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,    Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt As though it dragged road metal. My curse on ...