W.B. Yeats Collected Poems (Illustrated) Bare Knuckles Press Edition

The collected poems of W.B. Yeats, illustrated with contemporary photos of the Irish countryside, is intended as a travel companion for visitors to Ireland and Yeats country. The book is audio enabled and optimized for viewing on tablets and smartphones.

A perfect read on a trip to Ireland —Stuart Auslander, Sterling City Tours

FROM THE PREFACE

The Bare Knuckles digital edition of W.B. Yeats’s Collected Poems is a response to the call Yeats himself made in “The Scholars”:

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.

While several editions of the Collected Poems are currently available and offer excellent resources for students engaged in academic study—including Richard J. Finneran’s masterful tome based on his own scholarship, as well as on that of the highly refined work of James Pethica as part of The Cornell Yeats Series—we wanted to create an electronic edition intended for airplane, railroad, and bus travelers, and for reading at backpack rest stops. Hence, the Bare Knuckles edition differs in several key ways from other editions, both print and digital.

First, it is illustrated with scenes of the Irish countryside. These give the poems both a sense of place and a visual way of saying YES! to the beautiful singer who invites us all to come dance with me in Ireland.

I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.’

Secondly, out of deep respect for the integrity of individual poems and to heighten their appreciation, each poem appears on its own dedicated page. Hence, the title of a new poem does not appear before readers have finished the current one they are enjoying...