My Yeats Confession

Okay, I have a Yeats confession ....

The first time that I was actually introduced to Yeats and his poetry was in the mid-90s when I heard a song by, yes, the Cranberries called Yeats Grave. In the song Dolores O'Riordan repeats selected portions of one of Yeats’ poem, No Second Troy (a great poem about his fruitless pursuit of an Irish revolutionary beauty, Maud Gonne).

I didn’t have internet at home at the time, so I hit the library, pulled the lyrics, researched the quotes, and came to know of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats- all thanks to the Cranberries.

So no, I didn’t spend the summer in Ireland studying the works of our Irish poet in some revered conclave on the remote outskirts of a rustic Dublin village … I came to know Yeats (unofficially) through the music of the Cranberries.