Prompts for next time:
1. One could argue (many critics have) that Kavanagh is the first poet of the new, independent Irish State. If this is true, what are your impressions of that State based on your reading of his poetry?
2. The shadow of Yeats is long, falling over not just modern Irish poetry, but all modern poetry written in English. However, Kavanagh stands in stark contrast to his predecessor. We talked about some of those differences in class today, but I would like for you to explore this further. And, what is perhaps more difficult, discuss any similarities you see in their work. (You might pair an answer to this question with an answer to #5 below.)
3. How is the poem "Advent" a celebration of the immediate, and perhaps most especially a celebration of the vernacular? Where and how do you see this kind of celebration reflected in Kavanagh's other poems?
4. In "Peace," do you think the speaker feels more of an affinity with the "country fellows" mentioned early in the poem, or with the "fools" who try to transcend the local setting and "fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time"? Our instinct is to place Kavanagh among the turnips, potatoes, and turf banks, but isn't the relationship expressed in the poem a bit more complex than that? Thoughts?
5. After reading "Irish Poets Open Your Eyes," go back and read Yeats's "Under Ben Bulben." What are some of the most striking differences between the two poems?
6. Do you see anything in Kavanagh that reminds you of Joyce? If so, what? Also, after reading the poem of the same name, you might consider answering Kavanagh's question: "Who Killed James Joyce?"
7. If "Spring Day" is an artist's manifesto (I'm not saying it is, but for the sake of an interesting question...), what are the principles of that manifesto?
8. One thing that always strikes me when I read The Great Hunger is how many different styles Kavanagh uses. There are sections in rhyme and meter, sections of long-line free verse, sections of short couplets, etc. Why do you think Kavanagh varies the form of the poem so much? How might that be related to the content?
9. Talk about sexuality in these poems. How is used differently than in Wilde, or Yeats, or Joyce? Why, for example, might Kavanagh use sexual imagery and language to describe farming (and, for that matter, farmers)? Quinn calls the Ireland of The Great Hunger a "famine-stricken, psycho-sexual wasteland." Do you agree? Can comparisons be made to that pillar of modern poetry, The Wasteland?
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Despite its (ridiculous) loss at the Academy Awards (won't go off on a tangent), In Bruges, a movie written and directed by the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, was one of the best things I saw last year (or any other year, for that matter).
ReplyDeleteToward the end of the movie, there's a scene where Brendan Gleeson's character is looking out over the horizon and a hauntingly gorgeous folk song, including harp, pan pipes, bagpipes, banjo, and more, plays in the background. I just got the soundtrack today, and the lyrics of the song, entitled "On Raglan Road," were--you guessed it--written by Patrick Kavanagh.
The version on the soundtrack is by a band called The Dubliners, but Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits fame one of the best acoustic guitarists to have ever lived) has a beautiful version, as well; you can see it here.
There are so many things I want to comment on, I can't possibly hope to touch on everything.
ReplyDeleteI think Kavanagh's ending to both of those poems is meant to be understated and ambiguious. I think that in Shandocuff, his heart is literally shaken because these people think he's poor even though he's a poet AND because he owns this hill. His heart could be shaken at the realization that his black hills aren't as great as he wishes they were. BUT I also think the opposite is true of this statement, that he's not really shaken at all but being sarcastic and mocking to those people. It's like he was mocking them for caring enough to pity him.
In comparison to Yeats, I would say that while even though their styles are vastly different, I seem to notice a few lines here and there that are reminiscent of Yeats. In Address to the Old Wooden Gate, he ends the poem "Both you and I are kindred, Ruined Gate, / For both of us have met the self-same fate." This sort of self-deprecating ending was something that Yeats did in "Down by the Sally Gardens" and "Never Give All the Heart." Also, both Poets used local imagery that was very much a part of their life in Ireland. Only we're seeing a different perspective from each.
It's very interesting to see both poets discussion on what Irish poets should do. I imagine that Kavanagh's poem is a direct response to Yeat's poem. He exhorts Irish poets to open their eyes while Yeats pleas with Irish poets to learn their trade. Cabra is an area of low income housing/tenements on the outskirts of Dublin. Kavanagh is telling Irish poets that if you open your eyes, even the poor of Ireland will surprise. Surprise with what? I imagine that he's talking about Cabra, the poor of Ireland, as being material for the canvas of poetry. In contrast, Yeats pleas with poets to "sing" the peasantry, the hard-riding country gentlemen, the holiness of monks, and dead patriots. Their perspective of what makes for good material is completely different. Kavanagh tells Irish poets to be ordinary and in the moment, while Yeats seems to want Irish poets to be extraordinary, to look back at what other poets did. Perhaps such a contrast exists because Kavanagh was born into the modern tradition while Yeats evolved into it.
I want to comment more but it's getting too late and my mind isn't focusing well enough.
Andy - great song, thanks.
Great posts, and a great song.
ReplyDeleteTo touch on both of your comments, "On Raglan Road" does remind me of Yeats. Kavanagh's lines, "Oh I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away," remind me of some of the earlier Yeats that Jeph mentions, specifically "O do not Love Too Long," which, like Kavangh's poem, is about loving too much and has repetition within the line: "Sweetheart, do not love too long: / I loved long and long, / And grew to be out of fashion / Like an old song." In fact, there are several lines in "On Raglan Road" that make me think of Yeats. When he writes, for example, of "artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone," I think of lines from "The Statues." But then, of course, Yeats gives the poem a nationalist twist that Kavanagh does not.
So Yeats is often in Kavanagh's work in some form or other. At times Kavanagh is responding to Yeats directly (like when he writes, in "Spring Day," "the peacock's body's common," which is both a plea for poets to embrace the stuff of everyday and a dig at Yeats, who has a poem called "The Peacock"), and at other times he is, as Jeph suggests, treating the same material in a consciously-different way. It's great to read them both close together or, as I sometimes like to do, to read them simultaneously.
P.S.
I should have learned to play the guitar,
I should have learned to play them drums.
Naw...I've learned me some guitar and drums...
ReplyDeleteI should have learned me some Uilleann Pipes.
Kananagh cracks me up.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Hunger is just great. My wife and I thought that the beginning of section 11 was worded so perfectly. He begins by saying that his mother is six months ahead of life, and he's six months behind while his sister is stradling both. Obviously his mother being six months ahead means she's really pious and on top of things. He's six months behind which means that he's a sinner and not so much on top of things. His sister is stradling life...why? because she's a middle-aged virgin. Then Kavanagh writes "she prayed for release to heaven or hell." This paradoxical state of being is hilarious. She's got one foot in heaven because she's a virgin and she's got one foot in hell because she's a virgin...and she's praying for someone or something to push in either direction, out of the purgatory of virginity. Again, that idea of sexual oppression is blatantly evident. Its no wonder this poem was banned by the heavily Catholic influenced Irish government.
Speaking of “The Great Hunger,” I also had an interesting thought when I was perusing it online. Could “that man on a hill whose spirit
ReplyDeleteIs a wet sack flapping about the knees of time.
He lives that his little fields may stay fertile when his own body
Is spread in the bottom of a ditch under two coulters crossed . . .” possibly be related to the scarecrows being watched for an hour? It seems to me that both—“real men” and the straw-stuffed ones—may have a purpose in their so-called “life,” but it won’t be found by staring for an hour, contemplating.
I don’t know. It was just a thought I had.
As we were discussing “Spring Day” in class I couldn’t help to chuckle to myself at the absurdity of the event. It seemed more appropriate for us all stop talking get up, go outside, lie on the grass and start writing. In this way we would be keeping more with the spirit of Kavanagh’s poetry demonstrating an understanding of his approach. Of the Kavanagh selections thus far “Spring Day” is my favorite. The poem coupled with “Who Killed James Joyce” seems a call for true revival of poetry moving it from political battlefields and analytical jungles to the quite glades and grassy commons relatable to every one, that is who is willing to open their eyes.
ReplyDeleteOf course I also enjoyed “The Great Hunger”. This has got to be one of the funniest most cleaver things I have read in a long time. The assumption Kavanagh anticipates is that being an Irish poem and with a title as such it must be about the struggles during the great potato famine. (my guess at least) If anything at least the want of the poor, the desire and struggle for life, which indeed it is, all while riding a story of desire and lust. As we discussed it in class the other day I kept making parallels to dirt and wombs. Both in which seed is planted and life is sown.
I have a hard time comparing The Wasteland to anything, primarily because of intense distaste (I know, I know). I can't think of many "direct" comparisons between the two (mostly because I don't really get) Eliot), but both works definitely encapsulate a sense of ennui in which the characters (or, in the case of Eliot, citizens of the world) feel an existential longing for something else. In The Wasteland, the malicious gossiping between the women in the restaurant seems to echo some of the nagging of Maguire's mother in The Great Hunger. I would say, though, that Kavanagh's style is the antithesis of Eliot's (thank heavens).
ReplyDelete