Yeats' "The Circus Animals' Desertion": Back to Basics

Now that my ladder's gone,

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. 

 

My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

Yeats’ “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” is like Lowell’s “Skunk Hour” in the way the voice shifts from personal to public, then back to the personal.  In this case, the poet himself is aware of his change in tone; he actually divides a one-page poem into three numbered sections, each in a voice that's different from the other two.

"The Circus Animal's Desertion" - The Poem


I’m somewhat interested in the first section, but the second and longest section, which reviews the poet’s career in a somewhat detached, academic, public way, leaves me cold. If a reader is not fairly familiar with Yeats’ oeuvre, how is he to understand or care about the specifics in Section II?   Furthermore, the language, in spite of being self-deprecating, feels rather clinical, as it conveys an equally detached summary of Yeats’ plots, themes, tropes and strategies over his writing career.

But in Section III, we return to real people and their issues, which are both specific and universal—especially the awareness of encroaching old age, decrepitude, and death. Reviewing a life, how shall a writer, how shall any of us, confront the need to keep reinventing ourselves, our work, our sense of purpose? It is an intensely personal matter, and it requires a personal language if it's to ring true.

Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;

Yeats’ answer comes right out of the streets. It is urgent, visceral, and full of basic human concerns. It has not one iota of academic or public distancing. That old ladder is gone; it is now too late in life to call upon those same circus animals that once danced, performed, deluded, distracted. How can anyone feel distance in these lines, which challenge us all, from the perspective of raving sluts and garbage in the street? 

If we look back and review our own lives, and find them full of frippery, what then? Lie down and begin again, where all the ladders start—in the “foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”  Stamina, courage, integrity, work—they’ll wear us out, they’ll make us stink, but no other way means anything.

"The Circus Animal's Desertion" - The Poem

 

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?

A Touch More on Yeats

I worry about overkill in my posts on poetry, especially the last two, where I hope to show or remind people of the richness of language when poetry is done well, even in a seemingly simple work like "The Cat and the Moon." Though I realize the technical talk runs the risk of pushing people away, my hope is to send or return folks to poetry. In spite of all the readings, conferences, and MFAs in poetry, it remains an art in need of a much broader fan base.

With no plan for my next entry, let me use an Altadenahiker question as the entry to a short post for today (I heard that sigh of relief . . . ). In the latest visitor comments, AH asks, “What's your favorite Yeats?"

Without looking at a table of contents, the Yeats poems that leap to mind are "Sailing to Byzantium" ( http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/781/) and "The Second Coming" (http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/780/).

But the last stanza of "The Circus Animals' Desertion," is also superb, I think, especially the final two lines. It’s one of Yeats's last poems, in which he summarizes his career, its themes, important characters and tropes. Frankly, I find the middle three stanzas rather tedious. But the first stanza is excellent, and all of it sets up this conclusion:

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.


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