Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Irish Poetry

211 Pages·1989·10.38 MB·English

by  Terence Brown

TRADITION AND INFLUENCE IN ANGLO-IRISH
POETRY
Tradition and
Anglo-
Influence in
Irish Poetry
Edited by
Terence Brown
Associate Professor of English
Trinity College, Dublin
and
Nicholas Grene
Associate Professor of English
Trinity College, Dublin
M
MACMILLAN
© TerenceBrown and Nicholas Grene 1989
Chapter 2 © SeamusDeane 1989
Chapter 10 © SeamusHeaney 1989
Softcover reprint of thehardcover 1st edition 1989
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First published 1989
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
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and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset by Wessex Typesetters
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Tradition and influence in Anglo-Irish
poetry.
1. English poetry-Irish authors-
History and criticism
I. Brown, Terence II. Grene, Nicholas
821'.009 PR8767
ISBN 978-1-349-09472-1 ISBN 978-1-349-09470-7 (eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-1-349-09470-7
To Poetry Ireland
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Notes on the Contributors
X
Introduction 1
1 Constitution, Language and Tradition in
Nineteenth-Century Irish Poetry 7
Robert Welch
2 Yeats: the Creation of an Audience 31
Seamus Deane
3 Yeats and the Re-making of Synge 47
Nicholas Grene
4 Austin Clarke: Tradition, Memory and Our Lot 63
Peter Denman
5 Louis MacNeice's Ireland 79
Terence Brown
6 Patrick Kavanagh's Parish Myth 97
Antoinette Quinn
7 An Absence of Influence: Three Modernist Poets 119
Gerald Dawe
8 Derek Mahon's Humane Perspective 143
Brendan Kennelly
9 Poetic Forms and Social Malformations 153
Edna Longley
10 The Placeless Heaven: Another Look at Kavanagh 181
Seamus Heaney
Index 194
vii
Acknowledgements
The editors and publishers wish gratefully to acknowledge
permission to quote from copyright material as follows: R. Dardis
Clarke, for the extracts from Collected Poems of Austin Clarke (the
Dolmen Press); the author, for the extracts from Selected Poems (the
Dolmen Press), Three Poems and Third Person by Brian Coffey; the
Dolmen Press, for the extracts from the Complete Poems of Denis
Devlin; the Blackstaff Press, for the extracts from The Selected Paul
Durcan and The Berlin Wall Cafe by Paul Durcan (Blackstaff Press);
Faber and Faber Ltd and the author, for the extracts from Seamus
Heaney's 'Bog Oak' (Wintering Out), 'Singing School' (North),
'Personal Helicon' (Death of a Naturalist), 'The Last Mummer'
(Wintering Out) and 'Terminus' (The Haw Lantern); Katharine
Kavanagh, do Peter Fallon, 19 Oakdown Road, Dublin 14, Ireland,
for the extracts from the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh; the author, for
the extracts from Thomas Kinsella, Poems 1956-73 (Dolmen Press);
Faber and Faber Ltd, for the extract from 'The Suicide' in The
Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice and for the extracts from the
following other poems taken from The Collected Poems of Louis
MacNeice: 'Autobiography', Belfast', 'Train to Dublin',
'Valediction', 'Carrickfergus', 'Autumn Journal', 'Eclogue from
Iceland', 'The Closing Album', 'Carrick Revisited', 'Woods',
'Donegal Triptych'; Oxford University Press, for the extracts from
Derek Mahon, Poems 1962-1978 (Oxford University Press, 1979);
Faber and Faber Ltd and the author, for the extract from 'The
Boundary Commission' in Why Brownlee Left by Paul Muldoon and
for the extracts from 'The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants'
(Quoof), 'lmmran', 'Anseo' (Why Brownlee Left); and A. P. Watt on
behalf of Michael B. Yeats and Macmillan London, for the extracts
from The Collected Poems ofW. B. Yeats.
A version of Chapter Ten, 'The placeless heaven: another look at
Kavanagh' by Seamus Heaney, was delivered as the Keynote
Address at Kavanagh's Yearly in Carrickmacross in 1985. It was
subsequently published in 1987 in the Massachusetts Review, to the
editor of which we make acknowledgements.
The editors have made every effort to seek permission from
copyright holders; we apologise if we have failed to obtain any
necessary permissions.
viii
Acknowledgements ix
We also have some personal acknowledgements to make: to Rory
Brennan, the energetic secretary of Poetry Ireland who jointly
initiated the lecture series from which this collection developed and
gave the project so much of his help and support; to Sara Ellison for
careful and keen-eyed editorial assistance; and to Geraldine
Mangan who typed and re-typed many of the essays with her usual
devotion and skill.
Notes on the Contributors
Terence Brown is Associate Professor of English, Trinity College,
Dublin. He is the author of Louis MacNeice: Sceptical Vision, Northern
Voices: Poets from Ulster, and Ireland: a Social and Cultural History.
Gerald Dawe is Tutor in English, University College, Galway. He
has published two collections of poetry, including The Lundys Letter
(1985). He also edited The Younger Irish Poets and edited with Edna
Longley, Across a Roaring Hill: the Protestant Imagination in Modern
Ireland.
Seamus Deane is Professor of Modern English and American
Literature, University College, Dublin. He has published three
collections of poetry and is the author of Celtic Revivals: Essays in
Modern Irish Literature and A Short History of Irish Literature.
Peter Denman is Lecturer in English, St Patrick's College,
Maynooth. He has published one collection of poetry and essays on
Anglo-Irish Literature.
Nicholas Grene is Associate Professor of English, Trinity College,
Dublin. He is the author of Synge: a Critical Study of the Plays,
Shakespeare, Jonson, Moliere: the Comic Contract and Bernard Shaw: a
Critical View.
Seamus Heaney is Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory,
Harvard University. He has published many collections of poems,
most recently Station Island (1984) and The Haw Lantern (1987), and a
volume of critical essays Preoccupations.
Brendan Kennelly is Professor of Modern Literature, Trinity
College, Dublin. He has published many collections of poems, the
most recent being Cromwell (1983) and Selected Poems (1985). He is the
editor of The Penguin Book of Irish Verse.
Edna Longley is Senior Lecturer in English, Queen's University,
Belfast. She is the editor of Edward Thomas: Poems and Last Poems and
X
Notes on the Contributors xi
editor with Gerald Dawe of Across a Roaring Hill: the Protestant
Imagination in Modern Ireland. A collection of her critical essays Poetry
in the Wars was published in 1987.
Antoinette Quinn is Lecturer in English, Trinity College, Dublin.
She has published essays on Thomas Hardy and Edward Thomas,
and is now completing a book on Patrick Kavanagh.
Robert Welch is Professor of English, Media and Theatre Studies,
University of Ulster. He is the author of Irish Poetry from Moore to
Yeats and editor of The Way Back: Essays on George Moore's 'The
Untilled Field'.