In an essay on Suffering and Literature in the October 1959 issue of the Dublin magazine, Nonplus, Patrick Kavanagh stated one of his guiding principles. He said: "All we learn from experience is the way from simplicity back to simplicity." Certainly, his earliest poems are simple in form and diction. They deal boldly and lucidly with themes of the Irish countryside and of the solitary individual's quest for religious truth, but are often marred by conventional imagery and easy sentiment. This Kavanagh himself has recognized; he no longer approves of the greater part of the work written before 1955, and even has reservations about The Great Hunger (1942) which is certainly his most important work to date. This poem presents a terrifying and convincing picture of the spiritual and sexual hunger of the Irish peasant; its mood is that of Van Gogh's Potato-Eaters; the harsh imagery, the frequent abruptness of diction...