Patrick Kavanagh Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Brendan Kennelly

Critical Essay by Brendan Kennelly

SOURCE: “Patrick Kavanagh,” in Ariel, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1970, pp. 7–28.

In the extract below, Kennelly clarifies Kavanagh's use of the term “comic vision” and traces the development of comedy in his verse.

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There are certain poets of whom it can be said that they have a unique personal vision—Blake and Yeats for example—and one knows immediately what is meant. They have a new, inimitable, disturbing way of looking at life and, at their best, they communicate this vision successfully. In twentieth-century Ireland, one poet (apart from Yeats) possesses such a vision—Patrick Kavanagh—who, for some unaccountable reason, is one of the most misunderstood and undervalued poets of our time. It is with Blake and Yeats that Kavanagh must be compared, for he is a visionary poet and towards the end of his life he claimed that he had achieved a truly comic vision.

There is only one muse, the...
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