This paper focuses on the problems of poor imagination presented in the later poems of Wallace Stevens and W. B. Yeats. Being older and being barren of ideas, both poets feel the bitter anguish about their poetry writing. In his later poem, “Of Mere Being,” Stevens continues his endeavor to picture the ‘abstract’ or true reality but fails to accomplish “a supreme fiction” that is his own ultimate form of poetry. Yeats also seriously doubts of his own capabilities and laments the lack of theme as well as of subject matter in “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.” Although the imagination is sterile, however, the desire itself does not wither away totally. The elderly Stevens simply was not blessed with creative imagination in his later years. Hence, only the “mere” reality repetitively and gallantly appears in “Of Mere Being” and other later works. Yeats also does not give up but undertakes to write significant poems with integrity.

• 정성연(동국대) | Chung, Sungyeon