Thomas Kinsella Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Edna Longley

Critical Essay by Edna Longley

Thomas Kinsella, John Montague and Richard Murphy—a disparate threesome—are generally considered to lead the pack of Irish poets who emerged during the 1950s…. The 1950s were a transitional period for both Irish society and Irish poetry…. Kinsella, though not so overtly concerned as his contemporaries with social phenomena, reacted the more intensely to the winds of change. In "A Country Walk" the poet encounters signs of the times, and re-writes "Easter 1916":

     Around the corner, in an open square,
     I came upon the sombre monuments
     That bear their names: MacDonagh & McBride
     Merchants; Connolly's Commercial Arms …

Revaluation commenced or devaluation mourned? At any rate, a disturbed sense of dead glories, and a present hollowness, as "The waters hurtle through the flooded night". Kinsella's oeuvre abounds in quest-poems, deriving their structure from walks or from journeys by river and sea, whose thrust is summed up in the last line of "Downstream": "Searching the...
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