naked

A Coat
by William Butler Yeats

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.

This poem and I have been friends for somewhere around 40 years. I could say more precisely, but that would require effort. I was at college, and found it in a Yeats anthology I’d purchased for a graduate seminar (Blake and Yeats) at the local state university in Springfield, MO.

That’s all I’ll say for now. But I figured I should say something, since I cited it, some might not know it, and everyone should.

That’s all, but these four things:

• This is indeed the allusion in “just me” and the blog’s “rebranding” (god damn, that sounds pretentious). Arguably, explicating and uncovering what it means to be naked–and in fact, the many ways this poem means for me–is the task I’ve set myself to.
• It’s often in my head and I apply it variously.
• It’s for sure part of the canon (my canon), an essential part.
• It expresses one or two (or more?) of the core values.

So, yeah, it’s pretty fucking important, neither incidental nor off-hand. It’s also good poetry. Read it a few times. Don’t be a godsdamned philistine. Soak it in. Figure it out (or not; I almost hate that I said that, but I’ll leave it with the amendment that maybe you should more sit with it than “figure it out”). Of course I’ll say more.