YEATS'S IRELAND, DARWISH'S PALESTINE: THE NATIONAL IN THE PERSONAL, MYSTICAL, AND MYTHOLOGICAL.

ON a Canaanite Stone at the Dead Sea (Poem); MURAL (Poem); STATUES (Poem)

DARWISH, Mahmud, 1942-2008; YEATS, W. B. (William Butler), 1865-1939

William Butler Yeats's and Mahmoud Darwish's poetic oeuvres can safely be said to have contributed significantly to building distinct national consciousnesses for their respective nations of Ireland and Palestine. These poets have equipped themselves with unique repertoires, which include the personal, the mystical, and the mythological, not to escape into a more ideal or abstract world, but to create anew their homelands, which have been placed under political, social, cultural, and in Darwish's case, geographical erasure by oppressive imperialist/Zionist invaders and occupiers. Both poets take on their roles as politician/artist/magician seriously by using hypnotic and other magical techniques in order to focus their people's psyches on the idea of cultural and national liberation. The poetry of both Yeats and Darwish shows poignantly how a poet can embody the nation and how poetry can indeed make something happen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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