THE WORST APPARITION
.
In October here, and being just up the road from
Sleepy Hollow, things move towards Halloween and
on the radio I hear advertisement of a Fun House ride
passing jumping out at you horrors from films and I
think of the the lines "Fifteen apparitions Have I seen
the worst a coat upon a coat hanger." I know they are
from Yeats but forget which poem but it is this which
perhaps can be seasonal...
THE APPARITIONS BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
BECAUSE there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.
Distrustful of that popular eye
Whether it be bold or sly.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length,
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
....
Perhaps we might read this in relation to another by Yeats
in which a coat figures "I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked."
In any case this perhaps can be our version of that ride
I mentioned through scenes to consider, or that version
of Yeats and for illustration one of a coat on a coathanger
and one of Yeats in his early 40s in a portrait by photographer
Alvin Langdon Coburn ...the poet looks straight on seeing
what mystic apparition?... perhaps seeing (as the eyes of saints
in icons seem to do) into our dreams and imaginings...
.
In October here, and being just up the road from
Sleepy Hollow, things move towards Halloween and
on the radio I hear advertisement of a Fun House ride
passing jumping out at you horrors from films and I
think of the the lines "Fifteen apparitions Have I seen
the worst a coat upon a coat hanger." I know they are
from Yeats but forget which poem but it is this which
perhaps can be seasonal...
THE APPARITIONS BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
BECAUSE there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.
Distrustful of that popular eye
Whether it be bold or sly.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length,
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
....
Perhaps we might read this in relation to another by Yeats
in which a coat figures "I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked."
In any case this perhaps can be our version of that ride
I mentioned through scenes to consider, or that version
of Yeats and for illustration one of a coat on a coathanger
and one of Yeats in his early 40s in a portrait by photographer
Alvin Langdon Coburn ...the poet looks straight on seeing
what mystic apparition?... perhaps seeing (as the eyes of saints
in icons seem to do) into our dreams and imaginings...
.