The Winding Stair and Other Poems

First edition (1933)

The Winding Stair is a volume of poems by Irish poet W. B. Yeats, published in 1933. It was the next new volume after 1928's The Tower. The title poem was originally published in 1929 by Fountain Press in a signed limited edition, which is exceedingly rare.[1]

The title is linked to the staircase in an old Norman tower in County Galway which Yeats bought and gave it the Gaelicized name Thoor Ballylee castle; Yeats would spend the summers there for about a decade, beginning in 1919.[2] He saw the castle as a vital connection to the aristocratic Irish past which he admired. This volume capitalizes on the symbolic potential of the tower while examining the tower from the convoluted spaces within it.[2]

The Tower and The Winding Stair are two collections which are carefully parallel with opposing points of view. The two volumes and their poems share the complementary symbols of Thoor Ballylee and the winding stair within. Six of the poems in the latter volume were written before the publication of the former, therefore they are often discussed as a single unit.[3] In a complete turnaround from his bleak outlook of eternity expressed in his previous volume (which the poet admitted that he was "astonished at its bitterness"[3]), Yeats now ponders over the possibility and desire of reincarnation after death. Yeats was in poor health during this period; In a letter to Olivia Shakespear, Yeats admitted that "Perhaps if [he] was in better health [he] should be content to be bitter".[3] Though this volume includes more poems than The Tower, its contents are generally less well-known and thus less frequently anthologized. Among the best-known and anthologized are "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" and "Byzantium."

  1. ^ Smythe, Colin (1998), Gould, Warwick (ed.), "Crosby Gaige and W. B. Yeats's The Winding Stair (1929)", Yeats Annual No. 13, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 317–328, doi:10.1007/978-1-349-14614-7_15, ISBN 978-1-349-14614-7, retrieved 3 July 2024
  2. ^ a b Howes, Marjorie; Kelly, John, eds. (25 May 2006). The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats. doi:10.1017/ccol0521650895. ISBN 9780521658867.
  3. ^ a b c Daniel, Tompsett (13 June 2018), "The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933) – Spirit and Matter Upon the Winding Stair", Unlocking the Poetry of W. B. Yeats, Routledge, pp. 239–278, doi:10.4324/9780429467578-8, ISBN 978-0-429-46757-8