Talk:Sailing to Byzantium

Untitled
16 October 2007 - I quickly wrote this article a couple years ago. Reading some of it, I can tell this article could use some editing to improve the readability. If anyone wants to improve it, please do! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.192.208.103 (talk) 15:45, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to add a note to this entry that both Cormack McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and Phillip Roth's The Dying Animal derive their titles from this poem. I didn't know how to format it though, I'll let someone else do that, maybe? Also, what is this (DISCovering) business?

Gnomon says: This poem is still under copyright in Europe. Is it OK to reproduce it here?

The servers are in Florida, so it's probably fine.

I've always applied a different understanding to the lines >Nor is there singing school but studying >Monuments of its own magnificence; taking it to be derrogatory---any school is so focused on its past accomplishments that it is of no use to the poet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.104.27.5 (talk) 17:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Popular Culture
Just noticed the following: "Bruce Sterling's 1996 novel Holy Fire takes its title from the third stanza." In 1997, I emailed Bruce Sterling at his well.com address to ask if  the title of "Holy Fire"  was a reference to Yeats and he said no. Unless he has since changed his mind, it seems a bit of a stretch to assume that a two word title which coincides with two words of a poem definitively means that the title is a quote from the poem. Jonathanwallace (talk) 15:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Emailed him again and Sterling confirmed the title was not taken from the poem. Jonathanwallace (talk) 11:33, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Looked at a copy of Roth's "The Dying Animal" and there is no epigraph citing Yeats. I haven't read it, does anyone know if Yeats is referenced in the text? If not, I question the assertion the title was taken from the poem. May I propose a rule (you can call it the Wallace rule if you like) that book titles not be attributed to poems unless they consist of a unique or unusual phrase from the poem of at least five words? This would leave "No Country for Old Men" but eliminate both "The Dying Animal" and "Holy Fire". I will wait a week or so, then edit the Roth reference accordingly if no-one provides more information, or objects. Jonathanwallace (talk) 00:04, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Nobody responded so I made the edit. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:30, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Talking to myself here but as I spend more time looking at Wikipedia policies, I don't think my footnote to an email from Bruce Sterling is an appropriate source. I will wait a day or so for others to respond, but I think the best solution is to delete the Sterling reference entirely. Without my footnote, it is an unsourced assertion that a two word title is derived from a particular poem, and is therefore questionable and worthy of deletion. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:11, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

We leave the reference to Sterling's work  out of the article completely. It is superfluous information and not relevant. Stuff does not need to be proven that it does not exist. The connection between Yeats and Sterling is completely made up and is someone's WP:OR by association. It's nonsense value is the same as saying: 'Kudpung's book about Thai food Let It Be Chilly is based on a song  by  Paul  McCartney', and expecting it to be proven that  it isn't (it  isn't) by citing a reliable source. Sterling has been good enough to point out the inaccuracy in the Wikipedia. Kudpung (talk) 01:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Synthesis
Now that I've been editing Wikipedia for a while, I have come to understand that this article is complete synthesis, really a college paper on the poem. I will add some sources and/or stub the article within a few days. Jonathanwallace (talk) 12:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)