SOURCE: “Conclusion,” in Reading the Ground: The Poetry of Thomas Kinsella, Catholic University of America Press, 1996, pp. 246-59.

In the following essay, John discusses the maturation and defining features of Kinsella's later poetry in relation to Irish literary tradition and the influence of W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Aogn Ó Rathaille.

With work so dynamically “in progress,” it is inevitable that the latest complete volume, From Centre City (1994), collecting the previous five Peppercanister sequences—One Fond Embrace (1988), Personal Places and Poems from Centre City (both 1990), Madonna and Open Court (both 1991)—should reveal Kinsella setting forth on further journeys, with new departures leading to new beginnings. He has returned to Ireland, for example, to full-time writing, living first in Dublin and next Co. Wicklow. As the poet himself has noted. “The business has begun again.”¹ Indeed, the “business” will go on, by definition, without end: the quest for understanding...