William Butler Yeats

One can only surmise what Willy Yeats was smoking the night he wrote “A Stick of Incense” but he must have been burning incense to mask the vapors. Definitely he was “living in the moment,” for the second two lines bear little relation to the first two lines.

As is often the case in the dreck of the greats, the poem poses a knotty question about religion. Here the very origins of the central Christian mysteries of virgin birth and resurrection are (briefly) pondered. Saint Joseph makes an appearance and Yeats seems to confuse this underrated member of the Holy Family with his own stoned state of mind as thoughts of the world melting preoccupy him. (Heuristic! The line would later inspire Jimmy Webb to describe Macarthur Park melting in the dark.)

The poem ends with a line of astonishing grossness and an image that reminds another poet-blogger, Alan Sullivan, of a scene in King Kong. A perspicacious observation, since this is one of Yeats’ last poems and was no doubt written around the time the original King Kong was released. Dan Schneider notes that the poem “lacks the humor of a limerick & the tomb/womb-melt/smelt combo is just not even up to bad Yeats.”

A Stick of Incense