University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)

Irish Poetry since Kavanagh by Theo DorganReview by: David GardinerNew Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 178-179Published by: University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557381 .

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Reviews: L?irmheasanna

Twos Only an Irishman's Dream presents a useful case study on how ethnic

identity is created and shaped in American popular culture. Williams's work

shows that, when ethnic groups can appropriate the images attributed to them,

the potential exists to subvert the power of negative stereotypes. r^ WAYNE GANNAWAY

Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh, ed. Theo Dorgan, pp. 162, Dublin: Four Courts

Press, 1996. Portland; ISBS, $14.95 (PaPer)> $35 (cloth).

This collection of twelve RT? lectures brings together the work of some of the

most important writers on contemporary Irish poetry. Along with Poetry Ire

lands Theo Dorgan, the editor, Gerald Dawe, Caoimh?n Mac Giolla L?ith, Edna

Longley, Terence Brown, Anthony Roche, Alan Titley, Earn on Grennan, Nuala

Ni Dhomhnail, John Goodby, Eavan Boland, and the late Augustine Martin, to

whom the collection is dedicated, all contribute. Fittingly, this series of Thomas

Davis lectures is edited by the student of the editor of the first series on poetry, Sean Lucy, whose Irish Poets in English (1972) collected the assessments of Austin

Clarke, Roger McHugh, A. Norman Jeffares, Lorna Reynolds, Maurice Harmon

and a host of others who have benevolently shaped Irish Studies for the current

generation.

Along with being an outstanding supplement to this earlier collection, Irish

Poetry Since Kavanagh distinguishes itself in two ways. First, it is one of the first

studies to address the "eclipse" of the critical reputations of John Montague and

Thomas Kinsella?poets to whom much of the current ascendancy of Irish po

etry on the world stage is owed. John Goodby in his "Irish Poetry in the 60s,"

compellingly posits that the ground-breaking work of these poets might be seen

retrospectively as "Corkeryism at its last gasp lent a helping hand by neo

modernism." Second, and it is somewhat surprising that such a thing be distin

guishing, Dorgan's collection is notable for including essays dedicated to Irish

poetry in Irish.

Dorgan states in his introduction that "our collective hope is a modest one?

to clear some reflective space around the work of the poets here discussed and

to let in some light and air in a muggy and sometimes overheated room." Be

cause these are reprints of RT? radio lectures, the reader frequently gets the im

pression of overhearing a vigorous conversation as opposed to (as may be too

often the case recently) enduring a party meeting. Yet for all its appearance of

"light and air," the authors do not forgo the expected terrains. The bridge from

Yeats to the present is addressed with characteristic precision and grace by Au

gustine Martine in "Kavanagh and After: an Ambiguous Legacy." Following upon

178

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Reviews: L?irmheasanna

Martin's essay, the other authors address a wide range of topics including the Eu

ropean Modernists, the Ulster poets, Irish journals and publishing houses, and

the American influence in Irish poetry.

Taking advantage of the more public format of the radio lecture, Gerald

Dawe expands upon his earlier articles on MacGreevy, Devlin, Kinsella and Cof

fey to claim that "Irish culture still languishes under the shadow of the Cult of

Failure: that the poet, and his or her poetry, is a compensation for an inability to cope, challenge or deal with the world. The emphasis falls upon the personal

ity of a poet instead of where it right belongs?with the poetry.... [subse

quently] Literature in Ireland often seems like an inordinately claustrophobic af

fair of family squabbles, with their assumed intimacies of knowing who's who

and what's what." Arguable stuff?but, as acerbic as this observation is, it illus

trates the free play of ideas that does credit to this collection.

The real story of this collection though is that, for a collection on Irish po

etry, it is one of the first to address poetry written in Irish on equal terms with

Irish poetry in English. The three essays devoted to poetry in Irish provide a

useful discussion for the uninitiated and the expert alike. Caoimhin Mac Giolla

L?ith's discussion, "Modern Poetry in Irish, 1940-1970," focuses on the work of

four important elder poets?M?irt?n ? Dire?in, Eoghan ? Tuairisc (Eugene Watters), Sean ? R?ord?in, and M?ire Mhac an tSaoi. Mac Giolla L?ith dis

cusses the work of these authors as they prepared the way for the Innti group in Cork, which is lucidly discussed by Alan Titley in "Innti and Onward: The

New Poetry in Irish."

One hopes that the many Irish poets discussed in these two essays and re

flected upon in Nuala Ni DhomhnaiU's contribution, "The Hidden Ireland:

Women's Inheritance," will create an increased interest in the work of Irish

poets and a more informed understanding of the complex interplay between

poetry written in English and Irish?an understanding through which readers

may truly agree with Ni DhomhnaiU's classic rejoinder regarding her PharoaWs

Daughter. "I was not their Muse: they were my translators."

By keeping in mind this important knowledge, Irish Poetry Since Kavanagh

provides an important discussion and introduction of the phenomenal amount

of distinguished poetry written in Ireland since Yeats's death. In the conclud

ing essay, "Looking Over the Edge," Dorgan reflects: "The strong likelihood that

readers of fifty years hence will fall about laughing at some of the predictions

gives me a certain pleasure: in that laughter, at least, is the certain knowledge of

those very human frailties and small lunacies which give our life its unquench able savour and, not incidentally, the best of its poetry."

o^ DAVID GARDINER

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