William Butler Yeats visits New York
One hundred years ago today … Revered Irish poet, playwright and public figure William Butler Yeats spoke at Brooklyn Academy of Music on the topic of “A Theater of the People.” Yeats arrived 30 minutes late (Kelly 208).
From Brooklyn Academy of Music February 1920 Schedule. Courtesy Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Yeats and his wife George Hyde-Lees Yeats had arrived in New York in mid-to-late January (reports differ on the actual date) (see Murphy p. 505 and Kelly, p. 207), and checked in to the Algonquin Hotel.
George Hyde-Lees Yeats and William Butler Yeats. The Daily News Jan. 27, 1920 p. 10. Newspapers.com.
On January 29th he was celebrated with a dinner at the Poetry Society held at the Hotel Astor. The New York Herald of January 30th, reported Yeats’s statement: “All poetry is either a triumph of a man over himself or a triumph of a man over circumstance.” Among the other attendees were Siegfried Sassoon, Yone Noguchi, Margaret Widdemer-Shauffler, Cale Young Rice, and Arthur Guiterman.
The dinner was lampooned in the February 15th New York Times, in a satirical essay by Helen Bullitt Lowry and illustration by George van Werveke.
The New York Times, Feb. 15, 1920, p. 10.
More about the Yeatses in our February 22 post.