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Taste of Ireland’s Yeats Summer School in New York

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Glucksman Ireland House,

New York University

One Washington Mews (east side of 5th Avenue one block north

of Washington Square Arch)

9:30 am Registration and refreshments – Irish tea and coffee (courtesy of Bewleys), baked goods all day.

10:00 Opening remarks – Andrew McGowan, president of the WB Yeats Society of NY, and Maureen Murphy, associate director of the 2007 Yeats International Summer in Ireland.

10:10 “Jack Yeats and the Liquid World”- Unlike his brother, Jack at first was not sympathetic to independent Ireland. Tracing Jack’s relationships with Ernie O’Malley, Thomas McGreevy and Samuel Beckett, Nicholas Allen (NUI Galway) frames the painter, illustrator and writer against questions of revolution, republic and representation.

11:00 “Tradition and Transformation: Yeats, Heaney and the Irish Political Elegy” - These two embraced and transformed the poetic tradition the were heirs to. Kevin Murphy (Ithaca) discusses how each adapted the elegy (Yeats in “Easter 1916,” Heaney in “Casualty”) to redefine their poetic vocation in the face of political violence.

11:50 Refreshment break

12:10 “Lady Gregory and the writing of 'Easter 1916' - James Pethica (Willams) draws on work for his authorized biography of Augusta Gregory for Oxford University Press.

1:00 Lunch at Café Español, 172 Bleecker Street at Sullivan.

Soup or salad; select one of two dozen entrees; desert and coffee; choice of Sangria, wine, beer or soda... all for $16 if reserved and paid by deadline.

2:10 “Frank O’Connor’s Yeats” Michael Steinman (Nassau CC) talks about how O'Connor, who knew WBY at close range, delighted in the great man’s contradictions, portraying the poet, in his autobiography and essays, as at once an infuriating bully and manipulator, a domestic man, a comic figure, and the most influential artist he ever knew.

3:00 “The Afterlife of Cuchulain” - "I want a hero," announced Lord Byron at the beginning of "Don Juan." What poet does not? Yeats found in Cuchulain a hero for his entire artistic lifetime, from his earliest lyrics through many plays to his late great poems. Anne Margaret Daniel (New School; associate director of the 2008 Yeats Summer School) focuses on Yeats's Cuchulain and his artistic heirs.

3:50 Ken Monteith (LaGuardia CC) speaks briefly as we launch his Yeats and Theosophy (Routledge Press).

4:00-5:00 Social and a Summer School reunion. Wine and refreshments.

Entire program including luncheon, refreshment and afternoon social is $45 ($29 without the luncheon); morning only $19; afternoon with social $25. Send a check to W.B. Yeats Society of New York, National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, NYC 10003, or pay at the door (fee slightly higher).