With his Nobel Prize, his involvement in the Celtic Revival, and his later political prominence, Yeats is undoubtedly Ireland’s great national poet. And yet, those of us living in the real, as opposed to the imagined Ireland will see more that we recognise in the work of Patrick Kavanagh. Kavanagh himself suspected as much, and it undoubtedly rankled with him. The title was “Ireland’s greatest poet since Yeats” contained the implicit judgement: not as good as Yeats. Without wishing to get involved in that little argument, I will say that Kavanagh’s work is probably better loved in Ireland than that of his predecessor. The reasons for this are many, but key among them are his career-long allegience to the reality of the Ireland in which he lived and which largley (though decreasingly) survives today. His poem Epic can be seen as a declaration of poetic independance:
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting “Damn your soul”
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel—
“Here is the march along these iron stones”
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Til Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
Here he is declaring his independance from Yeats’ Cetic Twilight, choosing the stony, mucky, fierce Ireland he knew from his own life. Also, as the foremost poet of a still-young republic he is issuing a rallying-cry to all those that might follow him. His dismissal of the origins of World War Two as “the Munich bother” is not merely a joke. The poet finds the eternal in the particular, and from a poet’s perspective, a row over “half a rood of rock” is more significant than a political event happening far away. In aid of his case, he cites Homer: “I made the Iliad from such a local row”. The work of later Irish poets as different as Seamus Heany and Paul Durcan, celebrating and encapsulating the details of Irish life, both urban and rural suggests that they have taken up his challenge to poetic independence. Durcan’s own tribute “Surely My God is Kavanagh” suggests that if “Gods make their own importance”, so too do poets.
3 Comments
When Michael and I return, I demand you continue your own poetry posts. Firstly, your knowledge of it has advanced past the enthusiastic Leaving Cert student stage. Secondly, they’re a joy to read. Thirdly, I’d quite like the competition.
I have mixed feelings about Yeats and Kavanagh. Yeats’ poems are so smooth- they have none of the sharp edges or bumpy bits of Kavanagh’s.
But you can’t get away from the fact that they were written about the world as Yeats imagined it to be. And Kavanagh writes about the world as it was.
Though he could be a bit bad tempered about it.
I love his Canal pieces.
Pity they tore down the bench he used to sit on to put up a memorial to the bench he used to sit on.
Thanks for the encouragement Kevin. I intend to keep going with this project, if only for my own enjoyment. By the way, a wonderful book, which indirectly spurred me on to these postings and which you might enjoy is “Break, Blow, Burn” by Camille Paglia. It’s a collection of 43 classic poems, from Shakespeare to Joni Mitchell(!), with brief critical readings by the very astute Prof. Paglia. It could be used with great profit to teach poetry in schools, but given the author’s preoccupation with sex, probably won’t.