Cast a Cold Eye

WB Yeats was in almost every respect a traditional poet. When you read his poems you recognize a familiar world, one with all the things you expect in poetry: rhyme, meter, stanzas, and most importantly a lyric subject position (The "I" voice of the poet) that makes the narrator and the author one in the same.

So why do people make such a big deal about Yeats being one of the preeminent poets of Modernism? What makes Yeats modern?

Here's an attempt to modernize Yeats. Othniel Smith's Four Poems adds sound and video. What is the effect of his treatment of Yeats's poems? Does it aid, hinder, or change the original poems?