Cirrus@Austlit

'It is 1976 or ’77. I am eighteen or nineteen, an undergraduate studying English Literature at the University of Western Australia. In the large, raked theatre a dark-haired woman of middle height and graceful posture lectures about W. B. Yeats and his poetry. She stands and moves with a simultaneous air of shyness and assertive self-possession. There is muted yellow sunshine at the high windows and dust motes climbing. ‘Turning and turning in the widening gyre.’ Words such as these gather themselves and I am entranced. I have read some of Yeats’ poems, but only superficially. Until now I haven’t understood what his poetry says about Romanticism and the human crisis in the twentieth century. I have had no real appreciation of Yeats’ musical cadences and daring use of language. But, here, his poetry begins to speak eloquently in the theatre’s dry air. Fay Zwicky discusses Yeats and his ideas as if they are close to all of us and of a pressing relevance. Her timbre in reading his work invests it with intensity and a husky immediacy. I realise I have a lot to learn.' (Introduction)