Sailing to Byzantium Blog

I had an impression of the poem Sailing to Byzantium quite a misinterpretation. The first interpretation I had was that the poet didn’t want to be forgotten but actually he wanted to live forever and be like the artificial things because these things are never dead. Which made me think that why does this poet want to live forever and be like the artificial ones and not the natural ones. I myself don’t want to live forever unless of course everyone other than me lives forever too. The meaning of the poet was though not unique made readers learn more through the use of allusion. This is helpful in educating readers not just on the poem but to other knowledge’s out there. I think that this kind of technique is great in trying to educate young minds more efficiently because not only are they interpreting the poem but also adding more knowledge because the poem requires a brief knowledge of the poems words like in the case here the city of Byzantium. I myself didn’t even know that Istanbul is a great historic place. Though my interpretation s of the poem seemed very farfetched to the real interpretations, I was able to gain knowledge about Byzantium. The allusion technique is useful for trying to force readers to learn about specific things and history before diving into the real meaning of the poem. I didn’t quite get so well what the poem Is trying to say so I didn’t quite like the poem. Unlike previous poem you would know just a glimpse of what the poem’s meaning, but here its pure blank as if I have to decipher the poem just to get the whole meaning of the poem. Regarding the poems purpose to say that he wants to live forever, the poet never actually said why he wanted to live forever. And the living part meant that he wanted to live forever as a soul and yet he wanted to be an artificial bird. These two are contradicting each other because one is material and the other is immaterial which again made me wonder what kind he wants to live forever. Does he want to live as a soul forever or to be human forever because he was stating that he wanted to be artificial? The poem is so vague to me that it was hard for a simple reader to understand its meaning and it need a professional to just be able to understand the real interpretation.