Meeting Without Knowing It compares Rudyard Kipling and W.B. Yeats in the formative phase of their careers, from their births in 1865 up to 1903. The argument consists of parallel readings wed to a biographic structure. Reading the two poets in parallel often yields remarkable discursive echoes. For example, both men were similarly preoccupied with the visual arts, with heroism, with folklore, balladry and the demotic voice. Both struck vatic postures, and made bids for public authority premised on an appeal to what they considered the 'mythopoeic' impulse in fin de siècle culture. My methodology consists in identifying these mutual echoes in their poetry and political rhetoric, before charting them against intersections in their lives. Kipling and Yeats were, for much of their careers, irreconcilable political enemies. However, a cross-reading of the two poets' bardic ambitions, heroic tropes and interpretations of history reveals that, to achieve their opposed political ends, they frequently partook of a common discourse. Supplementing this analysis with biographical context, we can trace these shared concerns to their late 19th century artistic upbringing, and to the closely linked social circles which they inhabited in fin de siècle London. It is, in fact, their very mutuality during the 1890s which lent rancour to their ideological division after the Boer War. In turn, acrimony and denunciation only served to bind together all the more intimately, in an argumentative spiral of revolving discourses, two men who were often proximate but who actually met only in cartoons and satirical gossip.

Meeting Without Knowing It compares Rudyard Kipling and W.B. Yeats in the formative phase of their careers, from their births in 1865 up to 1903. The argument consists of parallel readings wed to a biographic structure. Reading the two poets in parallel often yields remarkable discursive echoes. For example, both men were similarly preoccupied with the visual arts, with heroism, with folklore, balladry and the demotic voice. Both struck vatic postures, and made bids for public authority premised on an appeal to what they considered the 'mythopoeic' impulse in fin de siècle culture. My methodology consists in identifying these mutual echoes in their poetry and political rhetoric, before charting them against intersections in their lives. Kipling and Yeats were, for much of their careers, irreconcilable political enemies. However, a cross-reading of the two poets' bardic ambitions, heroic tropes and interpretations of history reveals that, to achieve their opposed political ends, they frequently partook of a common discourse. Supplementing this analysis with biographical context, we can trace these shared concerns to their late 19th century artistic upbringing, and to the closely linked social circles which they inhabited in fin de siècle London. It is, in fact, their very mutuality during the 1890s which lent rancour to their ideological division after the Boer War. In turn, acrimony and denunciation only served to bind together all the more intimately, in an argumentative spiral of revolving discourses, two men who were often proximate but who actually met only in cartoons and satirical gossip.

Preface -- Setting the meeting stage -- So many meetings and so much frustration -- Get rid of meetings? no, solve meetings through science -- Evidence-based strategies for leaders -- The image in the mirror is likely wrong -- Meet for 48 minutes -- Agendas are a hollow crutch -- The bigger, the badder -- Don't get too comfortable in that chair -- Deflate negative energy from the start -- No more talking! -- The folly of the remote call-in meeting -- Putting it all together -- Epilogue: trying to get ahead of the science' using science -- Tool: meeting quality self-assessment -- Tool: sample engagement survey and 360 feedback questions on meetings -- Tool: good meeting facilitation checklist -- Tool: huddle implementation checklist -- Tool: agenda template -- Tool: guide to taking good meeting minutes/notes -- Tool: expectations assessment -- Acknowledgments -- References -- Index

Read This Before Our Next Meeting is Al Pittampalli's accessible guide on making meetings more effective, efficient, and worthy of attending The average office worker spends eleven hours in meetings every week. Yet all that time sitting around a conference table hasn't made us more productive. If anything, meetings have made work worse. Traditional meetings reduce efficiency, kill urgency, and breed compromise and complacency. But there is a solution, a way to have fewer, shorter, more purposeful meetings: Al Pittampalli's Modern Meeting Standard. By following its eight simple but radical principles you may never have to attend a useless meeting again. 'I dutifully avoid meetings whenever possible, which is pretty much always. If I were to go to meetings, though, I'd want Al to run them.' Chris Guillebeau, author of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Conformity