Patrick Kavanagh

If I had to select some poems of Kavanagh for a short anthology titled ‘the essential Kavanagh’ I would choose Iniskeen Road: July Evening, Shancoduff, A Christmas Childhood, Lines Written on a seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin, Epic and Advent. These would be my choices because these poems contain such qualities as providing an insight in rural Irish life, celebration of the ordinary and familiar world, the transformation of the ordinary into the exceptional, he also makes good use of the sonnet structure as well as the use of writing styles such as neologism and the repetitive inclusion of “I”, all of which I feel are all characteristic of Kavanagh’s poetry, what it includes and what the poetry is concerned with.

Kavanagh’s poetry is inherently Irish. His early poems set out to provide an insight into rural Irish life, a period unthought-of nowadays, but a period which is important to Kavanagh. Therefore his poetry is an historical device; it has a sense of history and patriotism to it. This is one reason I would choose some of the poems I mentioned for ‘the essential Kavanagh’ anthology, because these poems are evidence of Kavanagh writing on something which is important to him. In Iniskeen Road: July Evening we hear of the dances that the Catholic Church disapproved of in the 1930’s as they considered them immoral and dangerous: such dances are the one “in Billy Brennan’s barn tonight,” The reader of the poem is also given insight into the role of the poet in Kavanagh’s time, as we hear from Kavanagh that “I have what every poet hates in spite”, that “I am king/ Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.” In the 1930’s the poet, while respected, was avoided by the rural Irish; Kavanagh called the poet “a stranger within the gates.” Here we see this; Kavanagh cannot partake in the dances. The repetition of “and” in the first stanza shows his compounding misery for the multitude of activities he is missing out on. Poetry in rural Ireland is again exposed in...