Yeats, W. B.

William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin on this date in 1865. His dad studied law but never practiced, instead founding an art school. Willie's mom home-schooled him and read him a lot of Irish folk tales, many of which are bizarre and frightening but also lyrical and deep. He started writing poetry at a very young age and built a reputation (and a career) as the most Irish of modern Irish poets.

Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" was set to music by Joni Mitchell in a song called Slouching Toward Bethlehem. It is one of my all-time favorites. Joan Didion also wrote a book titled Slouching Toward Bethlehem about the counterculture in San Francisco in the 1960s.

Joni took some liberties with the poem, but this line: "Things fall apart. The canter cannot hold" is chilling in both.