Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems: Manuscript Materials (The Cornell Yeats)

Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (1932) has been called W. B. Yeats's finest single volume. It features not only the great series for which it is named—a series that includes the Crazy Jane poems—but also single poems such as "Byzantium" and "Coole Park, 1929."

This edition records every draft, from Yeats's first notion to the published version, a majority both in facsimile (in Yeats's fiercely illegible hand) and in faithful transcription on facing pages. A census of manuscripts identifies the source among Yeats's papers of each draft, and appendices trace the writing of the poems through notebooks, loose manuscripts, and galley proofs with Yeats's corrections and copious additions.

This volume contains all the manuscripts of "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,"—a poem added in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933). It also includes drafts of the unpublished "Crazy Jane and the King," completing the presentation of the Crazy Jane poems. The Cornell Yeats edition of The Winding Stair (1929) and the present volume together provide all the poems that were gathered to make The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Yeats's great "counter-truth" and companion volume to The Tower (1928).