Modern Irish Literature - Donald T. Torchiana (essay date 1964)

Donald T. Torchiana (essay date 1964)

SOURCE: “Contemporary Irish Poetry,” in Chicago Review, Vol. 17, Nos. 2 & 3, 1964, pp. 152-68.

[In the following essay, Torchiana compares the poetry of John Montague, Richard Murphy, Austin Clarke, and Thomas Kinsella.]

Contemporary Irish poetry written in English can show nothing comparable to the poetry of Yeats, perhaps even to that of Gogarty or the late Denis Devlin. Yet modern Ireland has several very competent, often satisfying poets.1 They would not be caught dead writing the lumpish verse, that still passes for poetry, once scribbled by AE, Katherine Tynan, F. R. Higgins, and Seumus O'Sullivan, and now by Ewart Milne, Donagh MacDonagh, and Monk Gibbon. Nevertheless, this persistent load of uninspired sing-song or doggerel that passes for contemporary verse at any time in Ireland is significant in itself. It suggests that the average educated Irishman, while a great hand at...

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