W. B. Yeats Festival May 17, 2008

Come and celebrate one of the twentieth century's greatest poets, W. B. Yeats. We will launch two new books as well as recite and read favorites from the Irish poet's work. If you want to read, recite, sing, or chant, come prepared! The two books being launched at Wordsmiths Books' Yeats Festival, assembled and conceived by Georgia State University-affiliated Yeats scholar Meg Harper are:

1. Yeats was preoccupied with the occult for most of his adult life. When he married in 1917, his English wife Georgie Hyde Lees surprised him (and herself) by attempting automatic writing, a form of mediumship. The messages that arrived explained everything from human psychology to world history to life after death. Yeats wrote the philosophic book A Vision (1925) out of the revelations, which also led directly to some of his most powerful poetry. A Vision has been thoroughly edited for the first time by Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, in an edition that is part of the 14-volume The Complete Works of W. B. Yeats. Professor Paul (Clemson University) is a scholar of high literary modernism and Pound; Harper (Georgia State University), of Yeats's occultism and Irish literature.

2. Yeats devoted years to an effort to restore an oral tradition by reviving the bardic arts of chanting and musical speech, an attempt charted in Ronald Schuchard's new book, The Last Minstrels: Yeats and the Revival of the Bardic Arts. Yeats was determined to return the 'living voice' of the poet from exile to the center of culture--on its platforms, stages, and streets--thereby establishing a spiritual democracy in the arts. Professor Schuchard (Emory University) is a scholar and editor of Yeats and Eliot.

Be sure to join us for our Yeats Festival!

Event submitted by Eventful.com on behalf of wordsmithsbooks.