Review - Yeats - "Three Pieces on the Creative Process"

Summary of William Butler Yeats “Three Pieces on the Creative Process”

“Three pieces on the Creative Process” is William Butler Yeats descriptions that speak to inspiration and creative thought.  Yeats write that good art inspires us physically (106).  It can take us to some other place and time where we are beyond what we are.  Great art encourages us to “touch and taste and hear and see the world” while taking us away from its mechanics (107).  He also notes that art transcends social constructs by having a morality that is personal (107).

Yeats writes that he found himself uninspired and he questioned if he had grown to old for poetry or if his subconscious had shut down.  Yeats writes his journey was considerable mostly because he had asked a friend for an opinion (107).  Yeats writes the friend would not speak to it and appeared to be cynical as the great works had been compromised and corrupted (107-108).   He finally read Yeats’s work and called it “putrid” (108).   Yeats’s found himself taking his poetry to other sources and discovered he was shopping for affirmations that met his own desire (108).

The third part of Yeats’s essay is the “Long-Legged Fly” (109).  The poem speaks to the great figures of time including Ceaser, Helen of Troy, and Michael Angelo (109).  All three are described during a contemplative phase of their life or work (109).  All of them are metaphorically related to a “long-legged fly upon the stream” and their “mind moves upon silence” (109).  

Works Cited

Yeats, William Butler. “Three Pieces on the Creative Process.” The Creative Process: A Symposium. Ed. Brewster Ghislen. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1985. 106-109. Print.