How does John F. Deane's poem "In the Margins" relate to Irish identity?
John F. Deane's poem "In the Margins" shows us a glimpse of the literary life of the speaker's friend. The poem opens with the friend "furtively" (secretly) showing the speaker "my poem cut from the newspaper" and kept in the inside pocket of his coat. The speaker says of his friend this "was the day / I knew I loved him."
The literary life of this friend is carried on in the margins of his life, amid other business, but also literally in the notes he makes on his readings:
in the margins
of his books—Gorky, Goethe, Proust...
This poem relates to Irish identity because the speaker places his friend and himself squarely into an Irish landscape. The speaker mentions the friend having a "stuffy" office in Achill Sound, a place on Achill Island off the northwest coast of Ireland where Deane was born. The speaker also notes Purteen, a...
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harbor in Achill Island.
The speaker marshals lovely imagery to describe Achill Island with its mackerel. It is a place too:
where the seal
lifted its head heavy with water-wisdom...
The poem connects the speaker's literary friend with the Irish mackerel (and mackerel might remind us of a famous poem by a fellow Irishman, Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium" that begins with imagery of "the mackerel-crowded seas." The speaker also associates the friend with the above-mentioned seals. The speaker feels he has
captured some quick creature in the net
because he has made a fan of this fellow, literary Irishman.
Both the speaker and the friend, while reaching out to the wider literature of Europe, stay rooted in an Irish seaside context, connected to Irish nature, the Irish poetry the speaker writes, and Irish friends.
Which poem by John F. Deane relates to Irish identity?
Many of John F. Deane's poems are rooted in the identity of his homeland. One common element in his poems is to pay tribute to the beauty of nature that is found in Ireland, particularly of Achill Island, where Deane was born. Rainbow is one example of this. This poem paints a nostalgic picture of a landscape of meadows, trout-filled rivers, and skies of billowing clouds. This is indicative of how Deane ties the landscape of Ireland to Irish identity.
In the Margins is another poem of John Deane's that integrates Irish identity. Achill Sound and Achill Island are central to this poem. The seaweed-strewn rocky coast with its seals and mackerels put the setting of this poem squarely in Ireland. Although the speaker makes references to European poets, such as Gorky, Goethe, and Proust, this poem looks more narrowly at an Irish context for literature and artistic creation.
Even the poem Blueberries, which is set in California, is deeply connected to Irish identity. The speaker of this poem connects the beauty of an American landscape with recollections of Ireland and a strong longing to be there again. The distance that they feel by being so far away from home is central to this short poem.