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?

Aristocrats and Skunks

A Litter of Aristocrats

In the visitor comments last time, Brenda’s Arizona tossed in a few large questions. They touch on important components of poetry and other writing, and they pose the still larger question for everyone, not just writers, "How does the way we speak affect what we say and the way we're heard?"

Skunk Hour- Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More

Marjorie Perloff's comment about the speaker’s voice in “Skunk Hour” was part of a larger point:  Lowell is addressing things in both a public and private way. There are moments, says Perloff, “when Lowell wanted more than autobiography, wanted to write a poetry of witness, of cultural commentary and political assessment.”
(http://marjorieperloff.com/reviews/lowell-return/)

The opening stanzas show Lowell expanding the poem into public concerns—Nautilus Island as a historical and sociopolitical place. By the end of the poem, Lowell has zoomed his lens to a more specific, smaller point of focus and a more personal voice.

I am not a skunk

Is constancy of voice and tone widely accepted as a requirement in a poem?  Surely it depends upon the poem’s need for such shifting or fluctuation. First, let’s remember that some kinds of constancy can become boring  and static.  Secondly, if there is fluctuation in voice, it might reflect the speaker’s character developing through the poem. Or maybe the situation changes in a way that requires him to change emotionally, speak differently, or shift to different kinds of imagery.  I think that happens in “Skunk Hour.”  Consider: we begin with an heiress, a bishop, a millionaire, and a gay merchant/decorator. We end with skunks—and a more or less anonymous speaker. Can we identify what has happened to take us from  A  to  B,  and does that begin to explain any changes in the speaker's voice, his way of being in his world?  

I find it hard to imagine a case in which an unmotivated, inexplicable change is purposeful, organic, and therefore acceptable. For me, “Skunk Hour” flirts with crossing that line, and because of that, I still don’t care about the speaker until the humanization of him, as I see it, in the last few stanzas.

Also, remember that my original comment was that I felt uninterested, left out, a bit clueless during those first seveal stanzas. I’m not much of a believer in heiresses, bishops. or millionaires in L.L. Bean attire. If the speaker misses them in some important way, how shall I make myself care?

I am not a skunk

Aristocrat Stalks Lovers in Parked Cars

So mine was a personal response—or lack of response—more than an analytical argument about a weakness in the poem, and the gap in communication may be my fault more than Lowell’s. This is one of the major poems of a major poet. But once I heard Marjorie Perloff agree that there was a change, something curious, if not downright wrong, a shift in the speaker from a sociological survey by an enervated aristocrat (more or less) to something like a plain old guy deserted by what he’s always known and encroached upon by skunks—then I felt better. Then I cared.

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