SOURCE: “On the Via Negativa,” in Times Literary Supplement, April 11, 1997, p. 22.

In the following review of Collected Poems, 1956-1994, Sirr summarizes the central themes and artistic concerns of Kinsella's poetry.

Thomas Kinsella is an anomalous figure in Irish poetry: a looming, magisterial presence less often celebrated than awkwardly registered, made remote both by his rigorous husbandry of his via negativa and by the relative accessibility and popularity of the poets who came after him. The subdued interiority of his poems is out of step with a poetic culture which tends to prize, and to expect, the kind of surface clarity, primary sociability and intimacy of address Kinsella hasn’t been much interested in for most of his career. He began as a scrupulously controlled formalist, marshalling argument and rhythm with impressive skill and delicacy in poems like “Another September”, “A Lady of Quality”, “Cover Her Face” or “Mirror...