Born in Dublin on June 13, 1865, William Butler Yeats was gifted with prodigious energies, pursuing interests not only in poetry, but in esoteric philosophy, folklore, painting, theater, and politics. Although the elaborate style of his early poems displays a Pre-Raphaelite influence, and his unrequited love for the beautiful Maud Gonne, an ardent revolutionary, permeates the work, Yeats was not the delicate poet retreating from the world to polish his songs in solitude.

Yeats grew up in County Sligo and London. In 1884, while studying art in Dublin,Yeats met the poet George Russell, and together they founded the Dublin Hermetic Society, dedicated to the study of magic and ritual. Simultaneous with the beginnings of his exploration of the occult,Yeats also embraced the cause of Celtic nationalism....
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In 1912, while Ezra Pound was living in London and working as unofficial secretary to William Butler Yeats, he was appointed Poetry’s first Foreign Correspondent. In this capacity he not only forwarded poems from his many contacts, including the then-unknown T.S. Eliot, but he also advised, harangued, and expounded. Together, America’s most controversial poet and its most enduring poetry magazine introduced literary Modernism to American readers whose taste had been dulled by the genteel, sentimental, and uplifting verse common to the newspapers and magazines of the time. Although Pound eventually fought with almost everyone (and his relationship with the magazine was often prickly) his generous support of fellow writers was legendary....
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