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Poems, 1956-73
Book by Thomas Kinsella
Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
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About the author
Thomas Kinsella
98 books19 followersThomas Kinsella was an Irish poet, translator, editor, and publisher.
He was educated at the Model School, Inchicore, where classes were taught in the Irish language, and at the O'Connell Schools in North Richmond Street, Dublin. His father and grandfather both worked in Guinness's Brewery. He entered University College Dublin in 1946, initially to study science. After a few terms in college, he took a post in the Irish civil service in the Department of Finance and continued his university studies at night, having switched to humanities and arts.
Kinsella's first poems were published in the University College Dublin magazine National Student. His first pamphlet, The Starlit Eye (1952), was published by Liam Miller's Dolmen Press, as was Poems (1956), his first book-length publication. These were followed by Another September (1958), Moralities (1960), Downstream (1962), Wormwood (1966), and the long poem Nightwalker (1967).
Marked as it was by the influence of W. H. Auden and dealing with a primarily urban landscape and with questions of romantic love, Kinsella's early work marked him as distinct from the mainstream of Irish poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, which tended to be dominated by the example of Patrick Kavanagh.
He received the Honorary Freedom of the City of Dublin in May 2007.
He taught the Irish Tradition Programme at Trinity College Dublin.
In December 2018, he was awarded Doctor in Litteris, Honoris Causa, by the Trinity College Dublin.
In 1965, Kinsella left the civil service to become writer in residence at Southern Illinois University, and in 1970 he became a professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia. While at Temple, he developed a programme enabling students to study in Ireland called "the Irish Experience".
In 1972, he started Peppercanister Press to publish his own work. The first Peppercanister production was Butcher's Dozen, a satirical response to the Widgery Tribunal into the events of Bloody Sunday. This poem drew on the aisling tradition and specifically on Brian Merriman's Cúirt An Mheán Óiche. Kinsella's interest in the publishing process dates back at least as far as helping set the type for The Starlit Eye 20 years earlier.
In the Peppercanister poems, Kinsella's work ceased to be Audenesque and became more clearly influenced by American modernism, particularly the poetry of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Robert Lowell. In addition, the poetry started to focus more on the individual psyche as seen through the work of Carl Jung. These tendencies first appeared in the poems of Notes from the Land of the Dead (1973) and One (1974).
In the 1980s, books such as Her Vertical Smile (1985) Out of Ireland (1987) and St Catherine's Clock (1987) marked a move away from the personal to the historical. This continued into a sometimes darkly satirical focus on a contemporary landscape through the late 1980s and 1990s in such books as One Fond Embrace (1988), Personal Places (1990), Poems From Centre City (1990) and The Pen Shop (1996). His Collected Poems appeared in 1996 and again in an updated edition in 2001.
Kinsella died in Dublin at the age of 93.
abridged from Wikipedia.
He was educated at the Model School, Inchicore, where classes were taught in the Irish language, and at the O'Connell Schools in North Richmond Street, Dublin. His father and grandfather both worked in Guinness's Brewery. He entered University College Dublin in 1946, initially to study science. After a few terms in college, he took a post in the Irish civil service in the Department of Finance and continued his university studies at night, having switched to humanities and arts.
Kinsella's first poems were published in the University College Dublin magazine National Student. His first pamphlet, The Starlit Eye (1952), was published by Liam Miller's Dolmen Press, as was Poems (1956), his first book-length publication. These were followed by Another September (1958), Moralities (1960), Downstream (1962), Wormwood (1966), and the long poem Nightwalker (1967).
Marked as it was by the influence of W. H. Auden and dealing with a primarily urban landscape and with questions of romantic love, Kinsella's early work marked him as distinct from the mainstream of Irish poetry in the 1950s and 1960s, which tended to be dominated by the example of Patrick Kavanagh.
He received the Honorary Freedom of the City of Dublin in May 2007.
He taught the Irish Tradition Programme at Trinity College Dublin.
In December 2018, he was awarded Doctor in Litteris, Honoris Causa, by the Trinity College Dublin.
In 1965, Kinsella left the civil service to become writer in residence at Southern Illinois University, and in 1970 he became a professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia. While at Temple, he developed a programme enabling students to study in Ireland called "the Irish Experience".
In 1972, he started Peppercanister Press to publish his own work. The first Peppercanister production was Butcher's Dozen, a satirical response to the Widgery Tribunal into the events of Bloody Sunday. This poem drew on the aisling tradition and specifically on Brian Merriman's Cúirt An Mheán Óiche. Kinsella's interest in the publishing process dates back at least as far as helping set the type for The Starlit Eye 20 years earlier.
In the Peppercanister poems, Kinsella's work ceased to be Audenesque and became more clearly influenced by American modernism, particularly the poetry of Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Robert Lowell. In addition, the poetry started to focus more on the individual psyche as seen through the work of Carl Jung. These tendencies first appeared in the poems of Notes from the Land of the Dead (1973) and One (1974).
In the 1980s, books such as Her Vertical Smile (1985) Out of Ireland (1987) and St Catherine's Clock (1987) marked a move away from the personal to the historical. This continued into a sometimes darkly satirical focus on a contemporary landscape through the late 1980s and 1990s in such books as One Fond Embrace (1988), Personal Places (1990), Poems From Centre City (1990) and The Pen Shop (1996). His Collected Poems appeared in 1996 and again in an updated edition in 2001.
Kinsella died in Dublin at the age of 93.
abridged from Wikipedia.
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October 7, 2024
One of my favorite people in the known universe mailed me a copy of this book for my birthday last year with this poem annotated "This made me think of you <3"
And to be known is to be loved, is it not?
Remembering Old Wars
What clamped us together? When each night fell we lay down
In the smell of decay and slept, our bodies leaking,
Limp as the dead, breathing that smell all night.
Then light prodded us awake, and adversity
Flooded up from inside us as we labored upright
Once more to face the hells of circumstance.
And so on, without hope of change or peace.
Each dawn, like lovers recollecting their purpose,
We would renew each other like a savage smile.
And to be known is to be loved, is it not?
Displaying 1 of 1 review