William Butler (WB) Yeats (1865 - 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and statesman.
A poet to whom I was introduced at the tender age of twelve, Yeats has continued to inhabit a special place in my heart.
His finest work, in my opinion, is "Sailing to Byzantium". After the collapse of Rome in the fifth century AD, the center of European culture shifted east to the Golden Horn. Renamed "Constantinople" after the famed Christian Emperor, Byzantium was, to Yeats, the spiritual homeland to which, in a modern world overcome by materialism, he yearned to return.
The tone of the poem, at its beginning, is wistful: Yeats, now an old man, feels like a stranger in both his time and place. The world around him abounds in flesh, sensuality, youth, and lust. It is, as he says, "no country for old men".
No.
The country in which he belongs, for which he pines, and to which, by way of his poetry, he'll take us, is that of the spirit.
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What is Pneuma by Daniel Finneran?
Mindfulness for the Thinking Mind.
A soothing, soporific voice with which to calm and center yourself.
Episodes on themes as diverse as walking, sleeping, stretching, anxiety, worldly possessions, positive affirmations, lunch hours, and morning commutes. Meditations and sleep stories for every occasion at any stage of life.
From Shakespeare to the Stoics, Coleridge to the Platonists, the Buddha to the Transcendentalists, we'll borrow our wisdom from the best who have ever thought, and strengthen our minds with their collective genius.
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