|
Hugh Maxton, review of Kinsella, Songs of the Pysche [46pp.]; Her Vertical Smile (both Peppercanister) [25pp]; Paul Muldoon, The Wishbone; Paula Meehan, Return and No Blame (Beaver Row). ‘Since the beginning of the 1970s, poetry in Ireland has endured two kinds of external pressure - the pressure of events in the purest, crudest sense (the Troubles, &c.), and the not unrelated scouting of certain publishers for tribal songsters to put the [lash] on ‘the Irish thing’. One manifestation of resistance has been the widespread interest in translation as a means of clearing a poetic space in the midst of babble; another (far more particular) has been the strategic elusiveness of Thomas Kinsella.’ Song of Psyche consists of ‘settings’ [Phoenix St., Bow Lane, &c.], so central and yet so tangibly remote in Kinsella’s poetic; an ‘Invocation’, then the thirteen ‘Songs of the Psyche’, and eight further poems headed ‘Notes’, the last ebing ‘Self-Renewal’ … in its concern with mirrors it recalls both the concluding lucid lines of a much earlier poem, “Mirror in February” and difficult experiments of “A Technical Supplement” [~] ‘Kinsella’s achievement here is to create the language as it is; that is, to carry through the necessary import[ation] of the language (English, of course) on himself, to master it and possess it, and then finally to release it without those purple bruises and melodrama screams on it which all too often mark the poetic medium. At a more local level, one of his techniques is a specied of post-Joycean micro-interpretation of single words with the space of a few short lines.’ Quotes: ‘What a thing it is/to know a thing/full fifty years/with kindness as of one thing/for another/of only its kind./A monster bore me/and I bear a monster with me.’ Her Vertical Smile, epigraph from Kinsella’s own memoir of Seán Ó Riada (full text available only in American edn. of Peppercanister Poems 1972-1978); title apparently form[s] fifteenth-century Irish language diagram of an eclipse - shown on title page; structure ostensibly musical with Overture, Intermezzo and Coda; materials from mytho-astronomical and old Vienna (as in ‘I heard Mahler then for the first time …’); photography as a source. ‘All in all, these two semi-fugitive publications are to be warmly welcomed for their rich and herd-earned complexity, their sureness of language, and not least for their uncanny transmission of Kinsella’s speaking voice.’ (p.153). On Meehan:‘The cover of Return and No Blames tells the reader nothing of the author. The twenty-five poems graph the development of a promising and engaging writer from gauche transcriptions of inner-city life to wry cameos of self-as-tourist. On the way, “T.B. Ward” gives wonderful evidence of the very proper use of obscenity for poetic purposes. We should all know more of Paula Meehan.’ (p.153.) Wendy Dunbar (Blackstaff), winner of Irish Book Design Award with her design for The Night before Larry was Stretched (Blackstaff). Mervyn Wall, The Complete Fursey [The Unfortunate Fursey and The Return of Fursey] (Wolfhound Press 1985) Kevin Casey, A Sense of Survival (Dublin: Wolfhound Press 1985). Extract from Patrick Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1985, in Books Ireland, Oct. 1985, pp.161-62. Writes that ‘the wealthier purchasers, however, did establish themselves as resident landlords, like the Wexford banking family of Redmond, who acquired a large estate, previously Protestant, in 1799.’ Further, ‘most of the land in north Tipperary was still held by middlemen in 1812, most of them Catholics, like the Scullys, the Ryans and the Maras.’ Also, ‘In Wexford town, for example, Richard Devereux provided almost all the physical fabric for religious and social life from his great personal fortunes.’ (p.162); also, quotes the phrase bruscár na bhaile, so often on the lips of the diarist Humphrey O’Sullivan’. Lord Cloncurry: ‘Depravity and a determined spirit of vengeance seem to have taken root in the heart of the despairing multitude. Our rulers think of no other rememdy than the sword and the halter … In Connacht the military were giving out small portions of potatoes to the starving multitudes at the same time with the bayonet ready to prevent a rush.’ (Quoted in Patrick Corish, The Irish Catholic Experience, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1985, in Books Ireland, Oct. 1985, pp.161-62.) Edward McPartland, James Gandon: Vitruvius Hibernicus (Zwemmer); Steve McDonogh, A Visitor’s Guide to the Dingle Peninsula (Brandon). James S. Donnelly, The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork: The Rural Economy and the Land Question [reiss.] (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Kevin O’Neill, Family and Farm in Pre-Famine Ireland (Wisconsin UP). Bil. Kenneth H. Connell & Raymond Crotty, The Population of Ireland 1750-1845 (1950), and Irish Agricultural Production (1966). Mícheál hAirtnéide, An Lia Nocht (Baile atha Cliath: Coiscéim); Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, Cóngar na gcrosán (Baile atha Cliath: Coiscéim); Art Ó Conghaile, Na chéad chéimeanna (Baile atha Cliath: Coiscéim); Mícheál Ua Ciarmhaic, Íochtar trá (Baile atha Cliath: Coiscéim); Caoimhhín Ó Cinnéide, Fathair na manach (Baile atha Cliath: Coiscéim); all reviewed in Irish by Dúghlas Sealy [Douglas Sealy]. Brady and Cleeve, A Biographical Dictionary of Irish Writers (Lilliput 1985); 1500 years; 1800 entries. Lilliput Pamphlets: 1. Tim Robinson, Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara. 2. E. Estyn Evans, Ulster: The Common Ground’. 3. Dervla Murphy, ‘Changing the Problem: Post-Forum Reflections’. 4. Paul Walsh, Ancient Westmeath. 5. Hubert Butler, Wolfe Tone and the Common Name of Irishman. Raymond Gillespie, Colonial Ulster: The Settlement of Ulster in the Early Seventeenth Century [Studies in Irish History, No. 1; 2rd ser.] (Cork UP 1985) Sean Lucy, ed., Goldsmith: The Gentle Master [Thomas Davis Lects.] (Cork UP), contribs. incl. Lucy, John Jordan, A. Norman Jeffares, John Montague and Thomas Kilroy. Mary E. Daly, Dublin - A Deposed Capital: A Social and Economic History 1860-1914 (Cork UP). Richard Murphy, The Price of Stone (London: Faber & Faber), 21 poems and a series of fifty personal sonnets; Padraig J. Daly, A Celibate Affair (Aquila); Pat Ingoldsby, Up the Leg of Your Jacket (Beaver Row); all reviewed by Robert Greacen, Books Ireland, Oct. 1985, p.169. Padraig A. Daly, b. Co. Waterford 1943; joined Augustinians, 1960; works for the Order in Dublin. Bernard Share, review of Dan. H. Lawrence, ed., Bernard Shaw, Collected Letters 1911-1925 (Max Rheinhardt); Books Ireland, p.169, quoting: Quotes, ‘As to devoting myself to Ireland, I doubt whether Ireland would at all appreciate my services […] The place is too small for me’ (Letter to Mabel Fitzgerald [mother of Garret] in 1914). To Mrs Campbell: ‘Two beauties I was born to love, Ireland’s and Italy’s - how they scortched my veins.’ Calls Dublin a ‘city of derision and invincible ignorance’; of Foxrock, ‘the air is like ether: it goes through my bones.’ Further, ‘There is no evidence that the British Empire is on the downgrade’ (1917).
Graham Reid, Remembrance (London: Faber & Faber). Quotes John Arden: ‘There is no way to interpret the harrowing experiences of the twentieth century in terms of the theatre except by making plays about them. And there is no way to make plays which will communicate directly to the publc without tryint continually to find some new physical context for their realisation. The view of society from even the most engagé university chair is a little like the view of Setzuan from the gods’ cloud in the Brecht play - extensive; but depressingly astral.’ John Hanratty, review of Mary Jones, Resistance (Blackstaff) and Patrick McGinley, The Trick of the Ga Bolga (London: Jonathan Cape) [288pp.]; John McGahern, High Ground (London: Faber & Faber) [156pp.]; calls Mary Jones’s novel ‘a daring and ambitious debut’ in which ‘twin elements of natoinal calamity (the unmourned dath of the Welshe nation, long ecplipsed by the more newsworthy Ulster problem) and personal crisis (the heroine has a tumour in her jaw) find thie perfect metaphor in the ramshackle dying hotel were ann Thomas retreats to await her operation. Here she meets Aled, an embittered young nationalist who heaps distaiin on the school-teacher unable to speak her native language. / The novel is painstakingly constructed … The humour wonderfully black.’ (p.174.) Raven Arts Press publishing Francis Stuart, Faillanda, a ‘new controversial novel … set in an inaginary, Kafkaesque land which shares th estagnant policital and mora climate of modern Ireland’; Matthew Sweeney, The Lame Waltzer, Poetry Book Soc. Recommendation; Michael O’Loughlin, After Kavanagh: Patrick Kavanagh and the Discourse of Irish Poetry [long polemical essay argues that a new and separate discourse which was distinctively Irish and authentic (as opposed to the articificiality of most Anglo-Irish literature) was established for the first time in English in the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh.] Sean O’Faolain, Bird Alone, epigraph ‘A freeman among the dead’; facs. rep. by OUP with intro. by Ben Kiely. Books Listed: Books received: Adverts: [Copied to Datasets 19/02/02 BS]
|
|||||