Yeats runs out of paper

There is a large W.B. Yeats exhibit at the National Library right now. It includes documentary films, original publications, and artifacts from his life. However, the most revealing items are his hand-written manuscripts. Specifically, the manuscript for "The Second Coming."

These manuscripts humanize Yeats, who seems at times to be detached, majestic, and almost superior. He writes in this ballad-like verse, where the words seem to come easily. The manuscripts, then, are nearly mundane. He writes, "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Moves toward Bethlehem to be born?" Moves? Of course, he promptly crosses it out to write "Slouches," but this alone crushes my thoughts of the man. Not only that, but it is a line squashed onto the end of a page, a poem where he clearly did not plan his space well. I wonder if, had he carried a binder of loose-leaf paper with him at all times, would we have a poem twice as long? Surely, that wouldn't get anthologized nearly as much. I think, part of the appeal of this poem to English teachers is its succinctness--little do they know, he really just ran out of paper.

The foyer of the library held a few posters on James Joyce and Ulysses. To extend this paper-related electronic post (ironic?) I would like to add that Joyce wrote most of Ulysses on sheets of children's manuscript practice paper. Of course, in non-chronological order, without any real structure until he assembled the episodes into a serialization. Why did he do this? They were the cheapest, most available sheets of paper around. The Moleskine notebook may be hold the spirits of Hemingway and Picasso, but to be a true modernist you must ransack the children's school supplies.

The U.S. is getting destroyed in rugby. Against some small country, probably some country we've either bombed or where we've supported a dictator's coup. I guess this is their little way of sticking it to the man. Beat us at something we don't care about.