SOURCE: Redmond, John. “Wilful Inconsistency: Derek Mahon's Verse-Letters.” Irish University Review 24, no. 1 (spring-summer 1994): 96-116.

In the following essay, Redmond compares Mahon's verse-letters to the work of W. H. Auden to highlight his use of a casual tone. Also drawing from Auden's essay on “Light Verse,” Redmond contends that Mahon's efforts to seem casual or self-effacing are undermined by their apparent artfulness.

Perhaps it is surprising to say so but wilful inconsistency is the most persistent feature of Derek Mahon's verse-letters. With their fairly regular rhymes and rhythms and with their very regular eight-line stanzas one might be more inclined to say that they are wilfully conservative and at a narrow, structural level this is so. But at every other level—of diction, of tone, of imagery, of subject-matter—these poems fluctuate to the point of conflict. Inconsistency, like emphasis and hesitation, is one of the aspects of conversation...