The Tower

W. B. Yeats meets Gregg Araki at a gay bar. The Tower is a "translation" of W. B. Yeats's The Toweran homage and reinvention of the poets greatest work. Whereas Yeatss book contended with his mortality as an aging spiritualist Irish Senator, this version contends with a new mortality: ours. The poems in this collection crystallize the transition from Legaults late twenties to his early thirties, situated in North America during a time of political upheaval. It takes each of Yeatss poems as a starting point and queers them. It translates Yeatss modernist urge, on the other side of a long century. In her review of The Tower, Virginia Woolf says Yeats has never written more exactly and more passionately. One might imagine shed conclude the same here. You cant fault these poems for lacking passion. Yeats used to talk to ghosts. His wife would let ghosts talk through her. They would talk to Yeats, and he would write down what they say. Another way you could put it is that Yeats talked to his wife. Ghosts are much closer than you think. They like to live in books. So Legault spent some time talking to Yeatss ghost. Or, Yeatss ghost talked to him. This is him talking back. "Through Legault, the opening of Yeats words in the title poem shift and turn from absurdity to one of anxieties around ageing" rob mclennan's Blog "If you've never cared about poetry, you will after reading these modern-day renderings..." Maria-Claire