“Now I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”
- W.B. Yeats
from The Circus Animal’s Desertion
In 1990 I attended a men’s retreat in Brevard, North Carolina facilitated by Michael Meade, Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, and James Hillman. That is a creative and powerful group of men and it was a foundational experience for all of those who attended.
This retreat inspired me to begin drawing and writing poetry and it rekindled my lifelong desire to write songs. Before leaving Brevard, I purchased a collection of poetry called “The Rag And Bone Shop of the Heart” that Meade, Bly, and Hillman edited. They took the title of their collection from William Butler Yeats:
“Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweeping of a street
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”
Yeats wrote this late in life and in the full poem he refers to several of his earlier well-known works. He refers to the images in those poems as circus animals. In fact, the title of the poem is “Circus Animals’ Desertion.” He was talking about no longer being able to go around parading the ‘masterful images’ that made him famous. He was determined to go in a different direction with his writing: Down. Down into his heart. 
Isn’t it true that our finest creative work, if it is to have meaning for our audience and for us, is found beneath the surface of our "ordinary" everyday lives? Yeats describes it as a not-so-pretty place to which he must descend, the place "where all the ladders start." And I think its true that the real value in what we write must be found in those “mounds of refuse”, where the unattractive sides of us go around without makeup or excuses and we are not allowed to criticize or judge them.
Country and pop radio is proof that a songwriter can make pretty good living skimming the surface. But Yeats was out for bigger game. He seems to be asking himself: Am I willing to go down there and face the “raving slut who keeps the till”? What, in fact, is the price of being truly candid? Can I see what is beautiful in “the sweeping of a street?" We all have to decide how honest and how vulnerable we’re willing to be in our writing and be willing to take that risk.
All this to say that the name “Rags and Bones” is both a nod to Yeats and a reminder to myself. A constant nudge that reminds me not to get too attached to making things look presentable or acceptable and to avoid tying it all up at the end with a pretty bow. Its a reminder to describe the experiences of my life as close to the bone as I am able at any given moment and tell the difficult truths about them because in the end, that’s what makes them intrinsically beautiful.
This notion of going down, of making something from the rags and bones found in the alleyways that wind through the cellars of our hearts, leads us to a discussion of two other phenomena which I’d like to talk about in future posts: nostalgia and sentimentality. If you have thoughts on this subject, I'd love to hear them.
In the meantime, may your muses be kind and generous. Don’t forget to drop me a line and let me know how things are going in your own foul rag and bone shop of the heart.
(Painting above is "Ragman" by Edouard Manet, 1869)
