I read a subtext in “Adam’s Curse,” in which the ‘love triangle’ is a metaphor for Yeats, our incomparable bard, writing a poem about poetry itself. The three characters begin here:

”We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.”

The beautiful mild woman is the Muse he drew upon and loved in so many poems of his, but he is moving on into a new age. This old Muse, that beautiful mild woman, will be left behind, as she was poetry of decades past and not to be relevant as he foresees the coming decades.

The summer’s end and that beautiful mild woman are one. She is the Muse of those decades of poetry that “walked in beauty like the night,” ..she is chivalry, romanticism and the poetry of myth..”La belle dame sans merci,” etc…She is what was. When she speaks of ‘woman’ she speaks of woman as poetry when:

”That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, "To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful."

Beauty was once an issue, a concern, a philosophy and very much part of the zeitgeist of 18th and 19th century poetry and art. Today, beauty is barely recognized as though the splinter of the literal was used to replace ‘beauty, music and cadence’ with a vengeance. In fact, I think that if Yeats’ poem “Adams Curse” ..unknown and submitted anonymously to 95% of today’s poetry journals, it would be rejected for being too iambic, too rhymed and either not clear enough, or not cryptic or ‘new’ enough.

Once upon a time, poets did ‘labour to be beautiful, ’ as the mild lady said. Then Yeats, the narrator repeats her sentiment in his own words:

”It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough."

The idle trade is poetry.

Then the narrator segues into time present about beauty, poetry, love:

”We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.”

Although poetry as they had known it is passing out of fashion, still, in the name of love..poetry, they saw the moon, separated from the imprint of love and poetry; he saw the moon as timekeeper, shorn and worn of its duties as the harbinger of love..

Then the narrator dares to acknowledge that he has changed just as his allegiance to his old Muse has waned, he no longer loves in the way of high romance. No longer can he fit his heart into the old forms, the old molds for chivalry and conditioned responses in life or in art. This poem ends on a threshold, a surrendering of the past that has depleted itself:

”I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

For the narrator, (Yeats) love, creation and poetry are one. I think “Adam’s Curse,” is the curse of knowledge, self knowledge. In his art, the poet as bard, lives to define and embody love for the generation in which he appears.
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There are two women at the gathering, the one addressed as you, and the beautiful mild one. The poet knew a lot of women. The one addressed as you is the one the poet is giving up.

Bf..

I think W.B.Yeats was a bit deeper in intent and gifts. His poetry wasn't written for a 'True Romance' magazine.
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Artemesia, I think you are right that poetry is part of Yeats' subject here: he says so. But the poem associates the curse of having to work for everything fine, since Adam's exile from Eden, seems to apply to love between people, as well. Both involve striving, he says-- and I believe him.

I'm sympathetic to what you say about this great poem submitted to contemporary editors-- but it's mind bending or paradoxical to imagine that. Early 21st century Americans don't speak the same way as cultivated Irish people of the very early 20th century. Even single terms like "schoolmaster" and "kitchen pavement" are a little strange-- even more, though more subtly, the syntactical patterns and the manners they evoke are different.

So if I imagine (a) that I never saw this poem and (b) that someone wrote it and submitted it to Slate next week . . . I get a cramp in my imagination! I hope I would recognize an extremely brilliant and inventive writer of verse, and possibly I would feel bewildered why that writer was impersonating someone from another time and place.

Mainly, thank you for participating Artemesia, and for giving me some things to ponder.

Bottomfish, why "the one the poet is giving up"?

Is to feel "weary-hearted" the same as to give up? In work, art or love?

Thank you for commenting Robert..

Perhaps you noticed that I introduced my critique by saying:
"I read a subtext in “Adam’s Curse,” in which the ‘love triangle’ is a metaphor for Yeats, our incomparable bard, writing a poem about poetry itself. "

I was/am aware of the consequenses of Adam's expulsion from Eden..the whys and therefores, and the relationship/love overtones, lines in the poem. I chose to focus on the warp of poetry although I was cognizant of the weft of the human love relationships that were woven together in this poem. I suspected that more emphasis would be made to the 'love trio' than the strong underpinning of poetry in this forum, so I thought I'd empasize the broader literary context.

I wasn't considering colloquialisms as creating the gap between early 21st century American and the cultivated Irish of the very early 20th century. I had referred to the change in sensibility on both sides of the pond ..the demise of garlands made for the old muses.. The change from daffodils and bluebells to leaves of grass..and then to little red wagons. Soul is outre as befits the demotion of the moon from goddess to mere timekeeper. I think Yeats was well aware of the transitions poetry was to enter beginning before and then in the decades that came after him. Great poems are layered or we wouldn't have so much to say about them.

Thanks for bringing us a poem with some meat on it this week. There is no substitute for genius.
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it so nice to have classic meaty dish like Yeats to dig into.

I sensed in the discussion of the beautiful Muse and its sequel not just poetry per se but a certain brand of poetry, which dovetails with a certain view of women, and a certain romantic outlook he still loves but whose impermanence and inadequacy vis a vis to the problem of existence Yeats realizes he must acknowledge.

There is language in "Adam's Curse" which is reminiscient of "Innisfree", but now that Wordworthian escape or juxtaposition is not feasible or sufficient even to the degree it was before. Likewise, the world-weary or world-wiser Yeats does not derive the same completist satisfaction in the beauty of love and love of beauty, perhaps as epitomized by his immediate poet/artist forebearer's tendency to fetishize beauty and love-child femininity, viz the pre-Raphaelite Blessed Damozel type with stars in her hair and the moon paying tribute. Dante Rosetti et al were not about an intellectual or existential exchange with Beauty or the Muse, and Yeats cannot satisfy himself with that mode of relation to poetry or women.

I supposed that the woman he was talking to in "the old high way of love" was the one he had loved and the other, the "beautiful mild woman" was not.

Fair enough, Artemesia. There's a conversation you and I could have about the traditional sometimes Victorian eloquence and terms of reference incorporated by Berryman, Plath, their contemporaries-- Williams, too, his love of Sappho, lots of "Asphodel That Greeny Flower" . . . even Ginsberg, I think. Part of the modernist enterprise was incorporating (disguising?) traditional poetic eloquence in new ways. And I hope I conveyed that I am willing to try the thought-experiment of a Slate submission in pentameter couplets, with a description of the sunset in it . . . I like to think that if it were a tenth as good as "Adam's Curse" I would admire it and accept it.

Inkberrow, do you think that the sunset-we-grew-quiet passage is a sort of pre-Raphaelite moment, to any degree? Maybe a more sober return to the relatively comic sighing and "learned looks" and "beautiful old books"?

The poem brings up how women must work very hard to keep their beauty, and in the same fashion poets must work to produce art. Over time, the beauty will change and evolve, as must the poet's art forms. In terms of the Yeats' poem not making it into a magazine today, I believe that statement is taken out of context. Today the world has more technology, using this technology people have become more efficient and can get more done. As a result, people have become more impatient and want to get to the point quicker. Poetry can be used to view the world as a snapshot at that exact moment in time when the poet wrote it. The writer's poems are his own, but he cannot help but be influenced by the modern language of the time and the world around him. If someone contemporary was to attempt to be more artistic and drawn out like Yeats, if that wasn't really who he/she was and that did not represent the world in which he/she came from, the poem would carry the feeling of being forced or fake. Yeats wrote the way he did because it was who he was. His work can be compared to any poets work, but to compare generations is difficult. Different generations have outside forces that impact their poetry in different ways. I believe the best way to view art is to compare art forms to other art forms of that time period and place in history. Looking at art that way, it allows a person to appreciate art for its changing forms, as well as looking upon past art with an appreciation. The person can then see how art not only captures the creativity of the artist, but how it also captures the world at that exact place and point in time, even if the artist is unaware of this fact. Just as Yeats understands his poems will change, so too the art of poetry will change and evolve in many ways as time progresses.

In fact, I think that if Yeats’ poem “Adams Curse” ..unknown and submitted anonymously to 95% of today’s poetry journals, it would be rejected for being too iambic, too rhymed and either not clear enough, or not cryptic or ‘new’ enough.

Good point, Artemesia. And not only Yeats but all the greats. Would Keats or Milton, or even Shakespeare, get a sonnet published today in The New Yorker? I doubt it. Or in Poetry, whose editor has expressed a preference for poems written in a "contemporary idiom"?

As EP said in Maublerley: "no one knows, at sight, a masterpiece"

Poetry journals and other magazines that publish poetry each have editors with preferences. I'll bet Keats or Milton or Shakespeare could get a sonnet published in The New Criterion.

In a way, MaryAnn.

But on the other hand-- I'm no historian, but I believe the equivalents of The New Criterion (let's say, those who considered themselves defenders of old, solidly traditional values) loathed Keats, treated him as a practitioner of "cockney poetry," a somewhat ludicrous follower of the leftist overturner Leigh Hunt. Shakespeare was an "upstart" practicing a low, vulgar art form, not a darling of learned reactionaries. And Milton was a revolutionary.

None of those three writers set out to make poems entirely in an old manner or according to old rules.

And though I make many mistakes, I believe that all three could get a sonnet published in Slate.

(Along with competent young writers in pentameter and rhyme (sometimes) like Mr. Campion, or Gunn and Walcott before him.)

For Slatefuturepoet and Valerian:

I found this..with many comments from editors and others on their criteria in accepting poems for their journals..that some 'have an agenda' goes without saying, but some of these requirements might save you time and angst:
<link>
As for 'Poetry,' I think that 85% of what their editors accept could have been written by the same poet/person. Monochrome stuff at best.
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Inkberrow..

Thank you for getting to the tzimmis of what I wrote..I might also add that 'the hollow moon' could also stand for Eros in his state of poverty..as descrided in Plato's 'Symposium.' Thank you for understanding and adding your commentary on the approach to beauty and love by a gemeration of poets and Ruskiin ..whom I believe balked at any appearance of feminine pubic hair, real or by depiction. I think Baudelaire at his most penetrating, would have caused him offense!
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