The Irish modernist poet W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) enters the dialogues in dialogue 26 as one term in Bob's poetic genealogy of the Tiny Note Chart: the figure he pairs with Arthur Kroker's "panic" quadrant, as Pound stands behind LaRouche, Lewis behind McLuhan, Eliot behind Thompson, and Joyce behind Dobbs. Yeats appears only in this mapping — a lineage marker, not a source Bob works through — placing the occult, apocalyptic strain of high modernism at the root of Kroker's technological panic.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the poet of the panic quadrant — the modernist Bob pairs with Kroker in the chart's literary genealogy, a lineage marker (Pound/LaRouche, Lewis/McLuhan, Eliot/Thompson, Yeats/Kroker, Joyce/Dobbs) rather than a studied source
Yeats placed at the root of the panic quadrant — Bob reads Kroker's technological panic (the Panic Encyclopedia) as an extension of Yeats, folding the poet's apocalyptic, occult modernism into the chart's genealogy of pathologies.
"And Kroker, as a panic, representing panic, putting it on. He did the Panic Encyclopedia. He is an extension of W.B. Yeats."
Supplies the image for what cannot be imaged — the rough beast becomes Bob's figure for a Tech Body that no categorical picture can trap
The borrowing is precise about its own limits — Yeats gives Bob a way to name an object by naming the failure to picture it, which is why he can also blame Hollywood's formula-making on the same unrepresentability.
"That's what the Tech Body is, a new rough beast, a beast where there's no categorical imagery to trap it, to encapsulate it."
Connections
The modernist poet Bob assigns to Kroker's "panic" quadrant of the Tiny Note Chart — apocalyptic, occult modernism at the root of technological panic.