SOURCE: “A Response to Hugh Kenner: Kinsella's Magnanimity and Mean Reading,” in Genre: A Quarterly Devoted to Generic Criticism, Vol. XIII, No. 4, Winter, 1980, pp. 531-7.

In the following essay, Johnston defends the depth and dynamics of Kinsella's verse—and Kinsella's place in modern Irish poetry—in response to an unflattering critique of Kinsella's work by critic Hugh Kenner.

If you consult Hugh Kenner’s stillborn preface to Thomas Kinsella’s Poems 1956–1973 in the winter issue, 12 (1979) of Genre, The Genres of the Irish Literary Revival, you will understand my paraphrase: “Some critics are blandly there, a pervasive tone. The more interesting ones discover focal moments when a quality isolates itself: as in the opening of The Pound Era.” This paraphrase would be as unfair to Mr. Kenner as the original was to Kinsella, not merely because the yawn is infectious but because both statements ignore the subjects’ intentions. Mr...