Spectres of Irish Poetry

Keating, Kenneth

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51112-2_1

Kenneth Keating³

Part of the book series: New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature ((NDIIAL))

201 Accesses

Abstract

Chapter 1 examines the dominant canon-centred criticism of Irish poetry which has constructed a stable, singular history of the development of Irish poetry. This study identifies the common misuse of Harold Bloom’s “Anxiety of Influence” and argues instead for the recognition of Jacques Derrida’s “spectral logic” in these critical acts which seek to ontologise reductive understandings of the poet. Such acts are described as divesting the poet and his or her work of any troubling indeterminacy, thus facilitating the construction of a singular line of Irish poetry. This chapter proceeds to interrogate the critical formation of a pyramidal canon of Irish poetry and the relative complicity of certain poets in this act, with sustained focus on the positions of spectres of a number of modern Irish poets.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 79.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 99.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 99.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
John Goodby, Irish Poetry since 1950: From Stillness into History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 4.
2.
Frank Kersnowski, The Outsiders: Poets of Contemporary Ireland (Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 1975), 79.
3.
Robert F. Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry: Tradition and Continuity from Yeats to Heaney (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), ix.
4.
Wes Davis, ed., An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010), 1.
5.
Goodby, Irish Poetry since 1950, 4.
6.
Edna Longley, “Introductory Reflections”, in Yeats Annual No.12: That Accusing Eye: Yeats and his Irish Readers, ed. Warwick Gould and Edna Longley (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 26.
7.
James Liddy, “An Open Letter to the Young about Patrick Kavanagh”, Lace Curtain 1 (1969): 55.
8.
Goodby, Irish Poetry since 1950, 1.
9.
Thomas Kinsella, “The Nineteen Thirties (1930–1939)”, in Flowing Still: Irish Poets on Irish Poetry, ed. Pat Boran (Dublin: Dedalus, 2009), 34.
10.
Dillon Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, 2nd ed. (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1997), xix.
11.
Robert Farren, The Course of Irish Verse in English (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1947), 146–7.
12.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, xix.
13.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 16.
14.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 16.
15.
Deborah Fleming, ed., Learning the Trade: Essays on W. B. Yeats and Contemporary Poetry (West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill, 1993), xv.
16.
Patrick Crotty, ed., Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1995), 1.
17.
Theo Dorgan, ed., Irish Poetry since Kavanagh (Dublin: Four Courts, 1996), 8.
18.
Jonathan Allison, “Questioning Yeats: Paul Muldoon’s ‘7, Middagh Street’”, in Learning the Trade, ed. Fleming, 15.
19.
Harold Bloom, Yeats (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 13.
20.
Bloom, Yeats, 5.
21.
Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry, 2nd ed. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 30.
22.
Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, 7.
23.
Dorgan, Irish Poetry since Kavanagh, 8.
24.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 43.
25.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Penguin, 2004), 2.
26.
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York and London: Routledge, 2006), 2.
27.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (London: Penguin, 1996), 1.1.25.
28.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 11.
29.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 6.
30.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 5.
31.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 9.
32.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 12.
33.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 13.
34.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 43.
35.
Brian John, “‘Brothers in the Craft’: Thomas Kinsella and the Yeats Inheritance”, Irish University Review 24.2 (1994): 249.
36.
Richard Schuchard, “The Legacy of Yeats in Contemporary Irish Poetry”, Irish University Review 34.2 (2004): 292–3.
37.
Peggy O’Brien, “Lough Derg, Europe and Seamus Heaney”, The Irish Review 13 (1992): 128.
38.
Adrian Frazier, “John Montague’s Language of the Tribe”, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 9.2 (1983): 57.
39.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 19–20.
40.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 20.
41.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5.188.
42.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.5.189.
43.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 24.
44.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 24.
45.
Alan Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3.
46.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 50.
47.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 50.
48.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 59.
49.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 136.
50.
Robert Welch, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1980), 12.
51.
Welch, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats, 12.
52.
Welch, Irish Poetry from Moore to Yeats, 11.
53.
Seamus Deane, “Poetry 1800–1890”, in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vol. II, ed. Seamus Deane et al. (Derry: Field Day, 1991), 99.
54.
Farren, The Course of Irish Verse in English, xi.
55.
Farren, The Course of Irish Verse in English, 1.
56.
Herbert Howarth, The Irish Writers 1880–1940: Literature Under Parnell’s Star (London: Rockliff, 1958), 4.
57.
Howarth, The Irish Writers 1880–1940, 6.
58.
Richard Loftus, Nationalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry (Madison and Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 8.
59.
Austin Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 2nd ed. (Cork: Mercier, 1961), 39.
60.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 49.
61.
Farren, The Course of Irish Verse in English, 123–9.
62.
Loftus, Nationalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry, 123.
63.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 20.
64.
Loftus, Nationalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry, 11.
65.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 8.
66.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 7.
67.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 12.
68.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 24–5.
69.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 22.
70.
Davis, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, 1.
71.
Davis, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, 1.
72.
Davis, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, 4.
73.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 43.
74.
William A. Wilson, “Yeats, Muldoon, and Heroic History”, in Learning the Trade, ed. Fleming, 21.
75.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, xx.
76.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, 33.
77.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 54.
78.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, ix.
79.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, x.
80.
Crotty, Modern Irish Poetry, 1.
81.
Sean O’Faolain, “1916–1941: Tradition and Creation”, The Bell 2.1 (1941): 6.
82.
Roy McFadden and Geoffrey Taylor, “Poetry in Ireland: A Discussion”, The Bell 6.4 (1943): 345.
83.
“Sense and Nonsense in Poetry”, The Bell 7.2 (1943): 159.
84.
John V. Kelleher, “Irish Literature To-day”, The Bell 10.4 (1945): 337.
85.
Kelleher, “Irish Literature To-day”, 337.
86.
Kelleher, “Irish Literature To-day”, 341.
87.
Davis, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, 9.
88.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, 37.
89.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, 38.
90.
Davis, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, 4.
91.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 79.
92.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 14.
93.
Michael Smith, Editorial, The Lace Curtain 4 (1971): 3.
94.
Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s, 3.
95.
Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s, 3.
96.
Anthony Cronin, “Thomas MacGreevy: The First of the Few”, The Lace Curtain 6 (1978): 56.
97.
Michael Smith, “Irish Poetry and Penguin Verse”, The Lace Curtain 3 (1970): 8.
98.
Davis, An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, 3.
99.
Samuel Beckett, “Recent Irish Poetry”, The Lace Curtain 4 (1971): 58.
100.
Beckett, “Recent Irish Poetry”, 61.
101.
Beckett, “Recent Irish Poetry”, 58.
102.
Beckett, “Recent Irish Poetry”, 63.
103.
Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s, 15.
104.
Susan Schreibman, introduction to Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy (Dublin: Anna Livia; Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991), xxxii.
105.
Goodby, Irish Poetry since 1950, 6.
106.
Smith, Editorial, 3.
107.
Smith, Editorial, 3.
108.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 9.
109.
Smith, Editorial, 3.
110.
Beckett, “Recent Irish Poetry”, 63.
111.
Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s, 17.
112.
Smith, Editorial, 3.
113.
Kersnowski, The Outsiders, 153.
114.
Seamus Deane, Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature 1880–1980 (London: Faber, 1985), 16.
115.
Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s, 3.
116.
Kersnowski, The Outsiders, 10.
117.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, 77.
118.
Austin Clarke, “The Thirties”, The Lace Curtain 4 (1971): 87.
119.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, 77.
120.
Liam Miller, introduction to Collected Poems by Austin Clarke, ed. Liam Miller (Dublin: Dolmen; London: Oxford University Press, 1974), vii.
121.
Rory Brennan, “Contemporary Irish Poetry: An Overview”, in Poetry in Contemporary Irish Literature, ed. Michael Kenneally (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1995), 1–2.
122.
Brennan, “Contemporary Irish Poetry”, 1.
123.
Brennan, “Contemporary Irish Poetry”, 2.
124.
Edna Longley’s Louis MacNeice: A Study (1988), Alan Gillis’s Irish Poetry of the 1930s (2005), Fran Brearton and Edna Longley’s Incorrigibly Plural: Louis MacNeice and his Legacy (2012), Tom Walker’s “MacNeice Among His Irish Contemporaries: 1939 and 1945”, and Jonathan Allison’s “Memory and Starlight in Late MacNeice”.
125.
Kinsella, “The Nineteen Thirties (1930–1939)”, 34.
126.
Clarke, Poetry in Modern Ireland, 60.
127.
Edna Longley, Louis MacNeice: A Study (London: Faber, 1988), 28.
128.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 13.
129.
Louis MacNeice, Modern Poetry: A Personal Essay, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), n.p.
130.
MacNeice, Modern Poetry, 5.
131.
MacNeice, Modern Poetry, 204–5.
132.
John Engle, “A Modest Refusal: Yeats, MacNeice, and Irish Poetry”, in Learning the Trade, ed. Fleming, 72.
133.
Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s, 60–1.
134.
In his 1941 study of Yeats, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), MacNeice suggests a reason behind his possible rejection of Yeats as a progenitor when he argues that “Yeats all his life was a professed enemy of facts, and that made my generation suspicious of him” (18).
135.
Kersnowski, The Outsiders, 11–12.
136.
Kersnowski, The Outsiders, 144.
137.
Jonathan Allison, “Acts of Memory: Poetry and the Republic of Ireland since 1949”, in Writing in the Irish Republic: Literature, Culture, Politics 1949–1999, ed. Ray Ryan (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 57.
138.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, 74.
139.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 9.
140.
Johnston, Irish Poetry after Joyce, xv.
141.
Moynagh Sullivan, “The Treachery of Wetness: Irish Studies, Seamus Heaney and the Politics of Parturition”, Irish Studies Review 13.4 (2005): 451.
142.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 67.
143.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 168.
144.
Garratt, Modern Irish Poetry, 230.
145.
Helen Vendler, Seamus Heaney (London: HarperCollins, 1998), 4–5.
146.
Seamus Heaney, preface to The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, ed. Patrick Crotty (London: Penguin, 2010), xlvi.
147.
Heaney, preface, xlvi.
148.
Seamus Heaney, “William Butler Yeats”, in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing Vol. II, ed. Deane et al.,783.
149.
Heaney, “William Butler Yeats”, 783.
150.
Heaney, “William Butler Yeats”, 790.
151.
Seamus Heaney, “Yeats as an Example?” in Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978 (London: Faber, 1980), 107.
152.
Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence discusses an ideal form of poetic inheritance which involves “two strong, authentic poets” (30).
153.
Heaney, “Yeats as an Example?”, 107.
154.
Seamus Heaney, “From Monaghan to the Grand Canal”, in Preoccupations, 115–16.
155.
Heaney, “From Monaghan to the Grand Canal”, 123.
156.
Heaney, “From Monaghan to the Grand Canal”, 124.
157.
Seamus Heaney, “The Placeless Heaven: Another Look at Kavanagh”, in Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001 (London: Faber, 2002), 144.
158.
Sidney Burris, “Reading Heaney Reading”, in Seamus Heaney: Poet, Critic, Translator, ed. Ashby Bland Crowder and Jason David Hall (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 59.
159.
Elmer Andrews, ed., Seamus Heaney: A Collection of Critical Essays (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 2.
160.
Deane, Celtic Revivals, 174.
161.
David Wheatley, “Changing the Story: Eavan Boland and Literary History”, The Irish Review 31 (2004): 105.
162.
Eavan Boland, Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (London: Carcanet, 1995), xi.
163.
Boland, Object Lessons, xv.
164.
Boland, Object Lessons, 134.
165.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 67.
166.
Boland, Object Lessons, 197–8.
167.
Jody Allen-Randolph and Eavan Boland, “An Interview with Eavan Boland”, Irish University Review 23.1 (1993): 118.
168.
Pilar Villar and Eavan Boland, “‘The Text of It’: A Conversation with Eavan Boland”, New Hibernia Review 10.2 (2006): 58.
169.
Denis Donoghue, “The Delirium of the Brave”, Review of In a Time of Violence, by Eavan Boland, The New York Review of Books, 26 May 1994, 26.
170.
Boland, Object Lessons, xv.
171.
Eavan Boland, A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet (Manchester: Carcanet, 2011), 121.
172.
Boland, A Journey with Two Maps, 123.
173.
Boland, A Journey with Two Maps, 240.
174.
Garrity includes the work of Eileen Brennan, Ethna Carbery, Eleanor Hull, Helen Lanyon, Emily Lawless, Winifred Letts, Alice Milligan, Susan Mitchell, Mary Davenport O’Neill, Blanaid Salkeld, Eileen Shanahan, Dora Sigerson, Katharine Tynan and Lady Wilde.
175.
Anne Fogarty, “‘The Influence of Absences’: Eavan Boland and the Silenced History of Irish Women’s Poetry”, Colby Quarterly 35.4 (1999): 271.
176.
Boland, A Journey with Two Maps, 249.
177.
Boland, A Journey with Two Maps, 265.
178.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 9.
179.
Derrida, Specters of Marx, 18.
180.
MacNeice, The Poetry of W. B. Yeats, 26.
181.
Gillis, Irish Poetry of the 1930s, 22–4.
182.
Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, trans. David Wills (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 41.
183.
Derrida, The Gift of Death, 45.
184.
Jacques Derrida, Aporias: Dying – awaiting (one another at) the “limits of truth”. Mourir – s’attendre aux “limites de la vérité”, trans. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 22.
185.
Derrida, Aporias, 43.
186.
Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1947), 201.
187.
Arthur W. Biddle and Toby Fulwiler, Reading, Writing, and the Study of Literature (New York: Random House, 1989), 100.
188.
William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, 3rd ed. (New York: New Directions, 1966), 57.
189.
Lisa Rodensky, “New Impressions III: Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity”, Essays in Criticism 53.1 (2003): 57.
190.
Rodensky, “New Impressions III”, 59.

Bibliography

Beckett, Samuel. “Recent Irish Poetry”. The Lace Curtain 4 (1971): 58–63.
Google Scholar
Boland, Eavan. A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet. Manchester: Carcanet, 2011.
Google Scholar
———. Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time. London: Carcanet, 1995.
Google Scholar
Brearton, Fran, and Alan Gillis, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Book Google Scholar
Crotty, Patrick, ed. Modern Irish Poetry: An Anthology. Belfast: Blackstaff, 1995.
Google Scholar
Davis, Wes, ed. An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010.
Google Scholar
Donoghue, Denis. “The Delirium of the Brave”. Review of In a Time of Violence, by Eavan Boland. The New York Review of Books, 26 May 1994, 25–7.
Google Scholar
Dorgan, Theo, ed. Irish Poetry since Kavanagh. Dublin: Four Courts, 1996.
Google Scholar
Farren, Robert. The Course of Irish Verse in English. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1947.
Google Scholar
Garratt, Robert F. Modern Irish Poetry: Tradition and Continuity From Yeats to Heaney. Berkley: University of California Press, 1986.
Google Scholar
Gillis, Alan. Irish Poetry of the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Book Google Scholar
Kavanagh, Patrick. Ploughman: and other poems. London: Macmillan, 1936.
Google Scholar
———. The Great Hunger. Dublin: Cuala Press, 1942.
Google Scholar
Kennelly, Brendan, ed. The Penguin Book of Irish Verse. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1970.
Google Scholar
Kersnowski, Frank. The Outsiders: Poets of Contemporary Ireland. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 1975.
Google Scholar
Kinsella, Thomas, ed. The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Google Scholar
Longley, Edna. Louis MacNeice: A Study. London: Faber, 1988.
Google Scholar
MacNeice, Louis. The Poetry of W. B. Yeats. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941.
Google Scholar
Miller, Liam. Introduction to Collected Poems, by Austin Clarke, edited by Liam Miller, v– vii. Dublin: Dolmen; London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Google Scholar
Montague, John, ed. The Faber Book of Irish Verse. London: Faber, 1974.
Google Scholar
O’Faolain, Sean. “1916–1941: Tradition and Creation”. The Bell 2.1 (1941): 5–12.
Google Scholar
Schreibman, Susan. Introduction to Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy, xix–xxxviii. Dublin: Anna Livia; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991.
Google Scholar
Smith, Michael. “Editorial”. The Lace Curtain 4 (1971): 3–4.
Google Scholar
Wilson, William A. “Yeats, Muldoon, and Heroic History”. In Learning the Trade: Essays on W. B. Yeats and Contemporary Poetry, edited by Deborah Fleming, 21–38. West Cornwall, CT: Locust Hill, 1993b.
Google Scholar
Yeats, W. B. Responsibilities and other poems. London: Macmillan, 1916.
Google Scholar
———. The Tower. London: Macmillan, 1928.
Google Scholar
———. The Wanderings of Oisin and other poems. London: Kegan Paul & Co, 1889.
Google Scholar
———. The Wind Among the Reeds. London: Elkin Mathews, 1899.
Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Kenneth Keating

Authors

Kenneth Keating
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Keating, K. (2017). Spectres of Irish Poetry. In: Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Canon. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51112-2_1

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51112-2_1
Published: 20 March 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51111-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51112-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics