Surviving Cancer

Abstract

On 31 March 1955, the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh had a cancerous lung removed in the Rialto Hospital, Dublin. His physical rehabilitation involved the remarkable psychological regeneration documented in poems written in the period 1956–59. ‘The Hospital’ begins with a declaration of love for a ward, for its regularity and plainness — ‘an art lover’s woe’ — in the conviction that nothing is ordinary, since, for instance, a stairway leads to ‘the inexhaustible adventure of a gravelled yard’.¹ Poetry’s commitment is to represent the numinous faithfully, to ‘Snatch out of time the passionate transitory’, and the authority with which Kavanagh speaks comes from solid, stony things — the yard, square cubicles, and concrete basins — which all commemorate the momentous. The poem itself, a solid eight / six rhyming sonnet, is in one sense a memorial that retains vivacity, glad to have avoided death, and overflowing in its gratitude for another chance to celebrate.