Douglas Lee Saum: The Wild Swans at Coole
by Rick deYampert
Entertainment Writer - The News-Journal
March 16, 2006
The Wild Songs at Coole
(Barbarous Generation Music)
A Nevada English teacher, amateur Yeats scholar and singer-guitarist, Douglas Saum says he was intrigued in the mid-1990s when he first noticed "the poems of W. B. Yeats singing their melodies to him." Now on a quest to set the poet's entire catalog to music, Saum has just completed "The Wild Swans at Coole," a collection Yeats published in 1919.
Utilizing mostly folk and folk-rock textures and sticking faithfully to the text of the poems, this two-CD, 47-track collection includes the famous, mysterious and beautiful title track, plus "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" and "On Being Asked For a War Poem."
