Patrick Kavanagh - Irish Poet (1904 - 1967 )

[Zeus]

Whilst over the years our little country has been well endowed with writers and poets, PK is a poet who is little know beyond our shores.......which is a pity as he is a wonderful earthy poet and my favourite beyond suchlike as William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney. Can I give you a flavour from his recent publication of poems;

PLOUGH-HORSES

Their glossy flanks and manes outshone
The flying splinters of the sun.

The tranquil rhythm of that team
Was as slow-flowing meadow stream.

And I saw Phidias' chisel there-
An ocean stallion, mountain mare,

Seeing, with eyes the Spirit unsealed,
Plough-horses in a quiet field.


Like it.......or otherwise?

[subterranean]

I only familiar with Carol Ann Duffy...ever read hers?

[Zeus]

I only familiar with Carol Ann Duffy...ever read hers?
No, I have never heard of this poetess. What era is she from?

[mingdamerciless]

I only familiar with Carol Ann Duffy...ever read hers?
mmm yes im study many of her poems at the moment. can i ask, do you like her poems? I find them very hmmm well i find it hard to relate to what she writes about, although i do like a couple such as anne hathaway, i love the way she sees s and a's relationship. also salome, although it is a bit gruesome. what do you think of them?

[Jay]

No, I have never heard of this poetess. What era is she from?
Carol Ann Duffy (http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth104)

[The Unnamable]

There are a few Kavanagh poems I come back to time and again. Here are just two for now:

Canal Bank Walk
Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.


ADVENT

WE HAVE tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower.

I have absolutely no religious faith but these are both wonderful.

I'll save In Memory of My Mother for later.