In recent years, many of literary works in English has been produced from the so-called Third World. The notion of "contemporary poetry, however, remains strikingly provincial in the anglophone Western World. Also, even though the conceptions of American poetry have expanded to include minority writers of the Third World, the story of the glottalization of English poetry remains largely untold. Why is postcolonial poetry so much less visible in modern literary world? The term postcolonial has often been criticized for erasing cultural and historical differences, so it can be useful in highlighting similarities and differences among various cultures still grappling with their colonial histories. Yeats has been placed in many literary and hermetic societies. For the constituencies of Yeats studies, the claiming Yeats as postcolonial can help renew attention to a poet who, often charged with antifeminism and reactionary politics, has been losing ground to postmodernism, antiformalism, and ethnic writing. Yeats's postcolonization can strengthen the claim of Irish studies to be a player in the vibrant field of postcolonial studies. If we define the Easter Rising is the crucial moment, "Easter, 1916" would qualify as postcolonial. If postcoloniality is construed not as after decolonialization but as since colonization, then Yeats is more easily swept whole into the postcolonial canon, but so would be all kinds of Irish literature since the early 20th century, perhaps stretching the term postcolonial beyond use. So, we can have difficulties in defining Yeats as a postcolonial poet.

• 김주성(단국대) | Jooseong Kim