On Being Asked for War Poem by W.B.Yeats

Evaluate 'On Being Asked for a War Poem.

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem by W. B. Yeats (1865-1939), written in 1915 and published the following year. It’s one of Yeats’s shortest well-known poems, comprising just six lines, and sets out why Yeats chooses not to write a ‘war poem’ for publication.

There is something of a contradiction to this poem: in a war poetry collection, it is a poem that refuses to speak about war. The poem says that it is not the place of a poet to write about politics, but that the poet instead should limit his interference in the world to pleasing his companions.

It was response to a request by Henry James  that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I. Yeats changed the poem's title from "To a friend who has asked me to sign his manifesto to the neutral nations" to "A Reason for Keeping Silent".The poem was first published in Edith Wharton's The Book of the Homeless in 1916 as "A Reason for Keeping Silent". When it was later reprinted in The Wild Swans at Coole, the title was changed to "On being asked for a War Poem".

‘On Being Asked For a War Poem’: This poem was written after Yeats was asked to write a war poem. It is a meditation on whether poets can write war poetry. It also considers an old question: what is the role of the poet in society, and what is the function of poetry?  An ancient philosopher, Plato, even thought that poetry should be banned as corrupting to society. Yeats here enters this long-standing argument in the modern age.

Original Poem:-

                                               I think it better that in times like these

                                               A poet’s mouth be silent, for in truth

                                               We have no gift to set a statesman right;

                                               He has had enough of meddling who can please

                                               A young girl in the indolence of her youth,

                                               Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

Summary:-

In summary, ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ is a poem about refusing to write a war poem when asked to produce one. This odd act of refusal-as-assent – writing a poem, but a poem which takes a stand against writing a certain kind of poem – has the air of irony about it, and Yeats probably intended his poem to be taken as a brief ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

Structure of the poem:-

In terms of its form, the poem is written in iambic pentameter, rhymed abcabc. The final two lines are the only ones which might cause some real head-scratching from readers (and critics), but Yeats appears to be making an appeal to the broad readership that poetry 

(including his poetry, by 1915) enjoyed: young girls might enjoy his romantic verses about old Ireland, while an old man might enjoy.

Why did Yeats refuse to write a ‘war poem’?:-

 

In February 1915, Yeats had written to his friend Lady Gregory: ‘I suppose, like most wars it is at root a bagman’s war, a sacrifice of the best for the worst. I feel strangely enough most for the young Germans who are now being killed.’ Yeats goes on to say that the ‘bespectacled’ Germans he has seen remind him more of himself than the English soldiers (‘footballers’) or the French troops.

‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ could be productively analysed alongside ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, for this reason. Yeats objected to the war, and could not imagine using poetry to wave the flag for the right ‘side’ (and his Irish blood would have boiled at the idea of writing a patriotic poem in support of the British troops in the war!). His line ‘We have no gift to set a statesman right’ is a forerunner to Auden’s famous line that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, and the similarity is no coincidence: Auden makes that well-known statement in his elegy for W. B. Yeats, written in 1939.

Thank You....