Modern Irish Poetry Research Articles

Exploring Contrasts: Depiction of Irish Rural Life in Yeats and Kavanagh

This paper aims to investigate the depiction of Irish rural life in selected poems by W. B. Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh. Modern Irish poetry presents two contrasting perspectives on the portrayal of rural Ireland. Some poets like W. B. Yeats, Derek Mahon, and Seamus Heaney, along with other leading Irish poets, romanticize the Irish countryside, portraying it as charming, magnificent, and idyllic. These poets prefer to live in tune with nature, tempted by its pastoral landscape and inspired by its idealized tranquility. In contrast, other modern Irish poets, including Patrick Kavanagh, Eavan Boland, Michael Hartnett, and many others, reject this idealized vision of the countryside. Instead, they offer a stark portrayal of rural Ireland, exposing its harsh realities and revealing the poverty, struggles, and hardships encountered by Irish peasants. This article, accordingly, seeks to explore these two different literary traditions within modern Irish poetry, with a focus on W. B. Yeats and Patrick Kavanagh as representatives of opposing attitudes. Specifically, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W. B. Yeats and The Great Hunger by Patrick Kavanagh serve as the concentration for this study. In reaching its conclusions, the article finally reveals the divergent perspectives portrayed within the two poems, highlighting how Yeats and Kavanagh employ distinct poetic techniques to present their attitudes, sharply contrasting each other.

Modern Literature

Abstract This chapter has eight sections: 1. General; 2 Fiction Pre-1945; 3. Fiction Post-1945; 4. Drama Pre-1950; 5. Drama Post-1950; 6. British Poetry Pre-1950; 7. British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Modern Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Jennifer Sorensen; section 2(a) is by Robbie Moore; section 2(b) is by Marta Donati; section 2(c) is by Rebecca Roach; section 3(a) is by Katherine Parsons; section 3(b) is by Rebecca Roach; section 4(a) is by Sophie Stringfellow; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Catriona Fallow; section 6(a) is by Wei Zhou; section 7 is by Mae Losasso; section 8 is by David Wheatley.

XIVModern Literature

Abstract This chapter has eight sections 1. General. 2. Fiction Pre-1945; 3. Fiction Post-1945; 4. Drama Pre-1950; 5. Drama Post-1950; 6. British Poetry Pre-1950; 7. British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Modern Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Jennifer Sorensen; section 2(a) is by Chris Mourant; section 2(b) will resume in 2023; section 2(c) is delayed by parental leave and will resume in 2023; section 2(d) is by Joshua Phillips; section 3(a) is by Katherine Parsons; section 3(b) is by Rebecca Roach, with thanks to Samuel Cooper, and covers work in 2020 and 2021; section 4(a) is by Sophie Stringfellow; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Catriona Fallow; section 6(a) will resume in 2023; section 6(b) is by Joshua Richards; section 7 is by Alex Niven and covers work in 2020 and 2021; section 8 is by David Wheatley.

XIVModern Literature

Abstract This chapter has eight sections 1. General. 2. Fiction Pre-1945; 3. Fiction Post-1945; 4. Drama Pre-1950; 5. Drama Post-1950; 6. British Poetry Pre-1950; 7. British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Modern Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Shawna Ross; section 2(a) is by Chris Mourant; section 2(b) will resume in 2023; section 2(c) is by Tiana M. Fischer; section 2(d) will resume in 2023; section 2(e) is by Joshua Phillips; section 3(a) is by Katherine Parsons; section 3(b) will resume in 2023; section 4(a) is by Sophie Stringfellow; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Graham Saunders; section 6(a) will resume in 2023, section 6(b) is by Joshua Richards; section 7 will resume in 2023; section 8 is by Jack Quin.

XIV Modern Literature

AbstractThis chapter has eight sections 1. General; 2. Fiction Pre-1945; 3. Fiction Post-1945; 4. Drama Pre-1950; 5. Drama Post-1950; 6. British Poetry Pre-1950; 7. British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Modern Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Shawna Ross; section 2(a) is by Francesca Bratton; Section 2(b) will resume in 2022; section 2(c) is by Georgina Binnie; section 2(d) is by Andrew Keese; section 2(e) is by Joshua Phillips; section 3(a) is by Mark West; section 3(b) is by Samuel Cooper; section 4(a) is by Sophie Stringfellow; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Graham Saunders; section 6(a) is by Noreen Masud; section 6(b) is by Matthew Creasy; section 7 is by Alex Alonso; section 8 is by Jack Quin.

XIV Modern Literature

AbstractThis chapter has eight sections 1. General. 2. Fiction Pre-1945; 3. Fiction Post-1945; 4. Drama Pre-1950; 5. Drama Post-1950; 6. British Poetry 1900–1950; 7 British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Modern Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Shawna Ross; section 2(a) is by Francesca Bratton; section 2(b) is by Caroline Krzakowski; section 2(c) is by Sophie Corser; section 2(d) is by Andrew Keese; section 2(e) is by Joshua Phillips; section 3(a) is by Mark West; section 3(b) is by Samuel Cooper; section 4(a) is by Rebecca D’Monte; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Graham Saunders; section 6(a) is by Noreen Masud; section 6(b) is by Matthew Creasy; section 7 is by Alex Alonso; section 8 is by Karl O’Hanlon.

Anthology of Young Irish Poets, Ingrid Casey (ed.)

With great anticipation and curiosity I received the Anthology of Young Irish Poets published in 2019 by Vakhikon and edited by Irish poet and visual artist Ingrid Casey who undertook the task of harvesting representative new Irish poetic voices for the purposes of this collection. The volume reflects the need to maintain representational gender balances by showcasing modern Irish poetry as a “living art” (p. 7) with agents of this representation eleven Irish poets: Doireann Ni Ghriofa, Ingri...

“A tight, mesmerizing chain of echoes”: the pantoum in Irish poetry

ABSTRACTThis article maps out the history of the pantoum form, from its origins in Austronesian culture as a pantun, to its emergence in modern Irish poetry. It is contended here that the pantoum represents the manifestation of cultural appropriation and distortion by the colonial oppressor, specifically that of the European colonisers of Austronesia. Detailed evidence for this argument is provided, drawing out the Francophone and Anglophone manipulations of the form as it developed in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. This essay proceeds to interrogate the use of the form by modern Irish poets to suggest that, while the continued use of this form risks perpetuating colonial oppression, Irish poets attentive to the history of the form foreground transnational cultural hybridity in an effort to not divest the form of its rich history and its importance in Austronesian culture. This conclusion is reached through close readings of texts by Anthony Cronin, Paul Muldoon, Nick Laird, Caitríona O’Reilly, Eleanor Hooker, and Justin Quinn.

The Poetics of Print: The Private Press Tradition and Irish Poetry

The Poetics of Print:The Private Press Tradition and Irish Poetry Conor Linnie (bio) In the archive of the Dun Emer and Cuala Press at the Manuscripts and Archives Research Library, Trinity College Dublin, there is a folder containing three large scrapbooks dated from 1903 to 1905.1 Written in purple and blue pastel across the worn hardback cover of the first book is the Gaelic script Leab.ar Dún Éimire. Inside, the opening page reframes the title with a profusion of pink sorrel in watercolor, the sinuous forms of the pale green stalks weaving a floral pattern of petals and buds. Translated into English as The Book of Emer's Fort, the three scrapbooks give a vivid insight into the daily life and workings of an arts and crafts cooperative: the Dun Emer Industries. The industries were established in 1902 by Evelyn Gleeson, who was joined by Elizabeth Corbet Yeats and Susan Mary "Lily" Yeats to manage the guild's three departments in weaving, embroidery, and printing. Gleeson named the industries after the famed figure in Irish mythology, Emer, who was renowned for her beauty but also for her wit and skill in needlework. The pages of each scrapbook bustle with creativity: handwritten poems and short stories are illustrated with sketches and paintings; photograph collages are pasted alongside design templates; advertisement mock-ups market a variety of crafted products from tapestries and tufted rugs to footstools. The scrapbooks were assembled by Elizabeth Yeats, who took charge of the guild's printing department: the Dun Emer Press. She outlined the ambition of the press in its first prospectus of 1903: "Though many books are printed in Ireland," Yeats begins, "book printing as an art has been little practiced here since the eighteenth century. The Dun Emer Press has been founded in the hope of reviving this beautiful craft."2 Specializing in the production of hand-printed [End Page 39] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The Book of Dun Emer (1903). The Library of Trinity College Dublin Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. The Book of Dun Emer (1903). The Library of Trinity College Dublin [End Page 40] limited-edition books made from native materials and circulated to an exclusive readership, Dun Emer Press inaugurated the Irish private press tradition in the twentieth century. This tradition is brought into focus by the digital exhibition The Poetics of Print: The Private Press Tradition and Irish Poetry, launched by the School of English and the Library of Trinity College Dublin.3 The Poetics of Print explores the interlinked histories of four private presses—Dun Emer, Cuala, Gayfield, and Dolmen—and their role in the development of modern Irish poetry from 1902 to 1969. The exhibition presents more than sixty unique images of archival and published material in a compelling digital narrative, drawing from the collections of the Library of Trinity College Dublin along with material from a diverse range of external institutional, commercial, and private sources. The Poetics of Print allies digital humanities (DH) research with the burgeoning field of Irish book history to showcase the influence and achievements of the Irish private press tradition. In its conception and design, the exhibition draws particularly from recent international digital projects associated with the critical expansion of modernist studies, which have elevated the role of DH to provide new archival and interpretive resources for our understanding of the material world of the modern book. The decisive turn of "the new modernist studies" toward a radically expanded materialist and historicist reading of the movement has reinvigorated scholarly interest in the print culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.4 Digital platforms and tools have in turn become central to the visualization, collation, and analysis of the myriad publishing contexts of modernism. Launched in 2017, The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP) originated as an archive of materials generated by Leonard and Virginia Woolf 's Hogarth Press and is currently developing into a broader critical archive of early twentieth-century publishers.5 MAPP's growing digital repository now includes a critical biography of the Dun Emer Press accompanied by a selection of digitized artifacts from the Gilsenan Yeats...

Language of Poetry and Language of Nature in Maurice Riordan and Seán Lysaght

The prevalence of the pastoral tradition in modern Irish poetry may be among the most enduring influences of the Irish Revival. W. B. Yeats, a spectre of influence as polarizing as he is inescapabl...

Modernism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.

A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism

A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism

A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism by Andrew J. Auge (review)

Reviewed by: A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism by Andrew J. Auge Kieran Quinlan A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism, by Andrew J. Auge, pp. 283. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013. $39.95. Although Andrew J. Auge’s new book was partly composed while he held the O’Connor Chair for Catholic Thought at Loras College in Iowa, it is not an exercise in literary or religious apologetics of any orthodox kind. It is, rather, a defense of the existence of the numinous, a dimension of experience that he would see as irreducible and of which—though he never says so explicitly—Catholicism is but one expression. Auge explores the work of seven modern Irish poets—Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan, and Paula Meehan—each of whom found compensatory riches in a tradition that had initially brought them much discomfort, both mental and emotional. He makes a convincing distinction between poets who grew up at a time when Catholicism dominated all aspects of Irish life and culture and those who came after them even when the latter—Dennis O’Driscoll and Seán Dunne are his examples—had serious religious interests. “This process of critical scrutiny,” he writes, “of separating the dross from the usable, the regressive from the revivifying, necessitates an attention to the particularities of the inherited Catholic material that is absent in the work of those who assimilate it in an already congenial form.” Auge conducts his inquiry in a theoretically sophisticated manner, but his use of theory is unobtrusive. Charles Taylor’s critiques of secular modernity are invoked; Richard Kearney’s “anatheism”—a kind of Irish alternative to generic unbelief—is called upon; referencing Michel Foucault helps elucidate the confessional experiences of Clarke; and Nietzsche is deftly used to illuminate Heaney’s trajectory. Likewise, Irish history, recent and ancient, is present to the extent that it needs to be, and he included helpful explanations of the reigning theology and canonical practices of the different periods. Auge’s work is enhanced, too, by the fact that memories of his own early piety remotely prompt his scrutiny of the lives of others who have experienced similar entrancements. [End Page 138] In the introduction, Auge sets out a thesis that runs through all of the book: “Through this dialectical engagement with Irish Catholicism, these poets engender new forms of spiritual vision and praxis that blur the sharp lines of demarcation interposed by institutionalized religion between belief and unbelief, secular and sacred.” That is not to say that the same thing is going on with every poet. Auge is hyperalert to nuance; “redress” being appropriate in one case, less so in another. Thus, Clarke found relief for the mental anguish that his early encounters with an overly interrogative confessional practice had caused him—a pain that led to his being institutionalized for an extended period and a failed marriage—in a “radical revision of the Catholic sacrament of confession.” Kavanagh, suffering from some of the same strictures, was more concerned with the Church’s co-opting and regularizing of ancient sacred space. Heaney worked his way from excessive concern with sacrifice—even in his art—to an acceptance of givenness and gratuity that received its authority “not just from the poet’s individual imagination but from the residue of traditional beliefs that still clings to them.” Montague, Ní Chuilleanáin, and Durcan became celebrants of unrecognized aspects of nuns and priests while reshaping the received perception of them and later, coping with the unexpected revelations of abuse and cover-up. Meehan rediscovered an ancient Irish goddess in modern Mariology while also becoming aware of its inherent dangers. Auge approaches each writer in a different way, selecting a particular aspect of his or her engagement with Catholicism—and thus, sometimes neglecting others—to explore the aspect of the theme relevant to his larger inquiry. When he is in what might appear to be familiar territory, Auge is careful to point out how his interpretation differs from what has gone before—for instance, in his comment that previous scholars failed to appreciate the “specific strategic function” that Clarke...

A chastened communion: modern Irish poetry and Catholicism

In this most welcome and insightful book of essays, Andy Auge sets about analysing the role of Catholicism in the work of 7 modern Irish poets: Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Paul Durcan and Paula Meehan. Clearly, you have in this choice a mixture of highly decorated figures, one a Nobel Laureate, and some less well-established voices, although all extremely well-established among the reading public. The overall impression given as one r...

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry ed. by Fran Brearton and Alan Gillis (review)

The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry ed. by Fran Brearton and Alan Gillis (review)

“SPLITTING THE ROCKS”: Derek Mahon’s Beckett

This study assesses impact of Beckett's work upon early work of Northern Irish Derek Mahon. Arguing that Mahon co-opts Beckett as an influence by misreading his work as that of manque, essay examines Mahon's handling of Beckett as source, model and 'adopted' precursor in four poems: Exit Molloy, An Image from Tithonus and Last of Fire Kings.The pros outweigh cons that glowfrom Beckett's bleak reductio -Mahon, Beyond Howth Head1. Exit MolloyIn 1984 essay on Samuel Beckett's poetry, Derek Mahon called him a minor and idiosyncratic poet (1996, 50). As editor of The Sphere Book of Modern Irish Poetry in 1972, Mahon had represented Beckett by two poems and from Waiting for Godot (1972b, 111-14) - famous exchange from act 2 of play about All dead voices (the title Mahon gives it), complete with its name prefixes and directions. The 1984 essay ends by quoting same passage which, Mahon asserts, achieves [...] condition of music (1996, 53). The anthologist's co-option of passage is perhaps not surprising. In early Beckett criticism (of 1950s and 60s) it was commonplace to insist on musical or nature of much of his writing. In 1963, for example, Louis MacNeice, Mahon's poetic forerunner, described Beckett's drama as essentially lyrical, asking the sort of question that used to be prerogative of poets (124). In 2006 essay Mahon effects merger from opposite direction when he describes Beckett's best poems, examples of the existential lyric (1996, 56), as dramatic pieces in their own right [...] continuous with work for stage (2006, 1). But Mahon's anthologization of passage from Godot also hints at significantly personal reading.To present Godo /-passage as an honorary is to emphasize its qualities as momentary illumination, still point of insight amidst tedium and anxiety of waiting. In its context these qualities are heavily qualified: illumination is both made possible and clouded by obligation to speak, to bale out silence. While epiphany is not sine qua non of lyric, luminous moment is nonetheless native to genre. In drama, however, even lyrical drama of Beckett, any moment of is always likely to be submerged or rendered ambiguous by current of action. But Mahon's tendency has always been to read Beckett as manque. Much of time it is even dull, he wrote of Beckett's prose in 1976. One is tempted to skip. [...] But good bits are very good indeed. Not inexpressive as their author might wish, but expressive of rare vision, like 'brief scattered lights' [1959, 207] in Malone Dies (1996, 60). In 1986 tribute, Mahon asserts that novels of Beckett are a matter of texture rather than incident, quoting from How It Is: a few images on and off in mud earth sky few creatures in light some still standing (Beckett 1964, 8). This insistence on luminous moment issues in remarkable observation about the last words of Lucky's 'think' in Waiting for Godot, where 'the skull in Connemara,' 'the tennis' and 'Cunard' combine to suggest Proustian glimpse of childhood, summer afternoon in west of Ireland during long-ago school holidays (1996, 58).Although there is no evidence for it (Mahon was writing in 1976, before first generally available biographical information about Beckett), this last speculation is shrewd enough: comfortably-off Protestant Dubliners might very well have holidayed in West in 1910s. And Proust connection is natural. After all, Beckett's first book was critical study which asserts that Proust's entire book is monument to involuntary memory and epic of its action (Beckett 1965a, 34). Furthermore Beckett always claimed that vital shift in his own writing life and creative output, trigger for post-war frenzy of writing, which produced three novellas, trilogy of novels and Waiting for Godot, was result of revelation (Knowlson 351-53) in his mother's room in Foxrock. …

Modern Irish and Scottish poetry

Modern Irish and Scottish poetry

Responses to the Holocaust in Modern Irish Poetry

This essay examines twentieth and twenty-first century responses by Irish poets to the Holocaust. It argues that, despite the illiberal tendencies of the Irish state towards Jewish immigration during and after the 1939-1945 war, recent commemorative activities in Ireland have included the Holocaust and are part of a wider commemorative ‘opening up’ in Ireland towards twentieth-century historical events. Important contemporary Irish poets have written Holocaust poems of notable merit including: Seamus Heaney, Harry Clifton, Derek Mahon, Pearse Hutchinson, Paul Durcan, Paul Muldoon, Thomas Kinsella and Tom Paulin, all of whom are discussed here. These poets are noted as second-generation Holocaust poets, more at home in the lyric form and less troubled by communicative dilemmas than their precursors such as Paul Celan and Samuel Beckett whose resemblance is briefly discussed. The essay concludes by arguing that Giorgio Agamben’s arguments about testimony after Auschwitz are strikingly pertinent to some of the poems under discussion. It also suggests that the historical essays of Hubert Butler may have acted as an unseen influence on some of these writers.

Wallace Stevens, in America, Thinks of Himself as Tom MacGreevy

Wallace Stevens, in America, Thinks of Himself as Tom MacGreevy William Fogarty These are the ashes of fiery weather,Of nights full of the green stars from Ireland,Wet out of the sea, and luminously wet,Like beautiful and abandoned refugees. The whole habit of the mind is changed by them —Wallace Stevens, "Our Stars Come from Ireland" I For many years, the Irish poet Thomas MacGreevy (1893-1967) has been a shadowy presence in the appendices and footnotes of modernist masters from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett to Wallace Stevens. But MacGreevy's continuing omission from major anthologies, such as Wes Davis' 2010 An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry, is increasingly troubling in light of several recent publications that suggest MacGreevy's significance for both the relationships he fostered and his intrinsic merits as a poet.1 The most compelling evidence for this reevaluation derives from the 2009 landmark publication of the first of four planned volumes of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, which has revealed that MacGreevy was the key figure in Beckett's early correspondence: most of Beckett's letters in that volume are addressed to him. In her review of The Letters of Samuel Beckett, Marjorie Perloff shows how the correspondence helps to offer a fresh portrait of the elusive Beckett: For here is the most reticent of twentieth-century writers—one who refused to explain his plays and fictions, wrote almost no formal literary criticism, and refused to attend his own Nobel Prize ceremony—revealing himself in letter after letter as warm, playful, unfailingly polite even at his most vituperative and scatological, irreverent but never cynical, and, above all, a [End Page 56] brilliant stylist whose learning is without the slightest pretension or preciosity. Perloff surmises, "we might not know this new Beckett had he not written so many letters to his close Irish friend Tom McGreevy" (McGreevy changed his name to MacGreevy in the 1930s; Perloff and other critics often revert to the earlier spelling). Reviewing the same collection for the London Review of Books, the novelist Colm Tóibín emphasizes the closeness between the two men: "In the years between Beckett's arrival in Paris in 1928, where he and McGreevy taught at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, and the outbreak of the Second World War, the years in which the letters in this volume were written, McGreevy was Beckett's confidant and his closest friend" (16). Tóibín further notes that the relationship exceeded mere affection and was rooted in an intellectual and aesthetic sharing: "In his interest in art, and his efforts to write a poetry filled with radiant or fragmented statement, the language unadorned, personal, sometimes obscure and strangely beautiful, [Beckett] found a soulmate in Thomas McGreevy" (16). Tóibín offers a few lines of verse from each poet as an example of how MacGreevy arguably reverberated in Beckett. Here is how MacGreevy's poem "Exile" began: I knew if you had died that I should grieveYet I found my heart wishing you were dead. (qtd. in Tóibín 16) These lines have their echo in an untitled poem by Beckett, written first in French: I would like my love to dieand the rain to be falling on the graveyardand on me walking the streetsmourning the first and last to love me. (qtd. in Tóibín 16) In a 1934 essay on "Recent Irish Poetry," Beckett claimed, in what has come to be regarded by scholars as the apotheosis of MacGreevy's critical assessment, that by not excluding "self-perception . . . nor postulat[ing] the object as inaccessible," MacGreevy made "probably the most important contribution to post-War Irish poetry" (Disjecta 74). We should, however, be sufficiently skeptical of this assessment. At least one critic has argued that Beckett's seemingly unequivocal praise for his friend's poetry was really an obfuscation of a less than benevolent opinion. From Seán Kennedy's point of view, we had better understand that "Beckett and MacGreevy differ quite sharply in their views on poetry, that these views reflect tensions arising from their different attitudes to religious faith, and that Beckett's published responses to...

An Anthology of modern Irish poetry

Never before has there been a single-volume anthology of modern Irish poetry so significant and groundbreaking as An Anthology of Modern Irish Poetry. Collected here is a comprehensive representation of Irish poetic achievement in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from poets such as Austin Clarke and Samuel Beckett who were writing while Yeats and Joyce were still living; to those who came of age in the turbulent '60s as sectarian violence escalated, including Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley; to a new generation of Irish writers, represented by such diverse, interesting voices as David Wheatley (born 1970) and Sinead Morrissey (born 1972). Scholar and editor Wes Davis has chosen work by more than fifty leading modern and contemporary Irish poets. Each poet is represented by a generous number of poems (there are nearly 800 poems in the anthology). The editor's selection includes work by world-renowned poets, including a couple of Nobel Prize winners, as well as work by poets whose careers may be less well known to the general public; by poets writing in English; and by several working in the Irish language (Gaelic selections appear in translation). Accompanying the selections are a general introduction that provides a historical overview, informative short essays on each poet, and helpful notes - all prepared by the editor.