These are End Times—can there be any doubt?—and in this brilliant, dense essay Patrick J. Keane explains how and why Yeats’s prophetic/apocalyptic poem “The Second Coming” has become the byword (and epitaph?) for our world, the modern era, the contemporary predicament. Keane has already published three books on Yeats; he brings an easy erudition and … Continue reading Eternal Recurrence: The Permanent Relevance of William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming” |Essay — Patrick J. Keane