Patrick Kavanagh Reading List

Here I am, rushing back from Ohio, with a Patrick Kavanagh reading list in-hand. If you haven't been able to track down the Penguin Selected Poems, or if it hasn't arrived yet, you should be able to find many (but probably not all) of these poems online. I definitely want you to read Quinn's "Poetry and Independence" piece at the beginning, so I will be bringing a few copies of that to class for those of you who don't have it yet. It's very good, if slightly repetitive in places; and for those of you who find yourselves drawn to Kavanagh's work, or who want some supplemental material for your term paper, Quinn has also written an excellent biography on him.

I like to think of Kavanagh as the counterweight to Yeats. That's overly simplistic for sure, but it's accurate in many ways, which we will discuss. I will start a Kavanagh thread tomorrow, but for now, feel free to compare his work to Yeats's, or to Joyce's for that matter. He was a big fan of Joyce.

Here is your reading list. I'll be excited to see what you make of Kavanagh.

For Monday
"Inniskeen Road: July Evening"
"Shancoduff"
"Memory of My Father"
"Spraying the Potatoes"
"Stony Grey Soil"

For Wednesday
The Great Hunger
"Advent"
"Peace"
"Threshing Morning"
"Pegasus"
"In Memory of My Mother"
"Spring Day"
"Irish Poets Open Your Eyes"
"To be Dead"
"Who Killed James Joyce?"

For Friday
"Innocence"
"Epic"
"If You ever Go To Dublin Town"
"Irish Stew"
"The Hospital"
"Come Dance With Kitty Stobling"
"Canal Bank Walk"
"Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin"
"An Insult"

Most of these poems are fairly short, but The Great Hunger, Kavanagh's magnum opus, is quite long, so you might want to read ahead if you have time.

See you tomorrow.

Patrick Kavanagh monument on Dublin's Grand Canal.