Notes from Ireland

I was in Ireland for Easter, at an auspicious and controversial time - the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising.

I also had a chance to talk with my friend, Fr. Brennan, who sometimes lectures at Fordham but is also a parish priest. His moving, thoughtful Easter Sunday homily included references to both Patrick Kavanagh (pictured) and Howard Nemerov - surely a unique occurence in Christendom this year?

Seamus Heaney's new collection, District and Circle, was ubiquitous, and was book of the month at Hughes & Hughes (the airport book sellers among other things) - and he also received a glowing review in - of all places - The Economist. Will read it more closely in days to come. The poems I did read were satisfyingly tight, crafted and palpable - evoking the real presences of things of this world - it seems a late, valedictory collection.

Andrew Motion, in his Guardian review, noted (I write this from memory) that while it did not surprise with new tactics or strategems, the new Faber collection confirmed the necessity of Heaney's project - which seems to be to establish (even sanctify) a good relationship between word and world, one that is creative, healthy, and optimizes the best that both language and experience have to offer each other; it is a deeply gifting (and gifted) act to be pursuing, and one that is radically conservative in nature.

As always, I am torn between my appreciation of such stately care placed at the service of poetry's grand tradition, and, an urge to chafe at the bit, and pursue newer, and sometimes less redemptive tracks. Poetry also, it seems to me, troubles as much as heals.

While in Dublin, I picked up Vona Groarke's latest, Juniper Street, just out from The Gallery Press, which does a good-looking book. Groarke was based in Dundalk but now lectures in America. Look forward to reading her new one.

I also noted the new Selected series from Penguin - James Fenton, Roger McGough and Carol Ann Duffy out now - Hill and Mahon and Sophie Hannah out this summer. The books are beautifully designed, and will hopefully bring new readers to these essential poets; Hannah is young, and it is most impressive to see her up there with the others.

I also bought the new Selected from John Burnside, just out from Cape, so a lot of reading next month.

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

IRISH POETIC GENIUS KEVIN HIGGINS HAS DIED

Terrible sad news - the major Irish satirical poet of his generation, and a poet of comedic genius, and powerful authentic resonance, Kevin Higgins, has died yesterday in Ireland. Higgins, the author of many poetry books, most published by Galway-based Irish press Salmon, was known and admired world-wide, but nonetheless deserved even more recognition from the established great and the good - i.e. the prizes, medals, crowns, gongs and other titles thrown at many many lesser lights - except, he was so brilliantly biting, critical, and scathing of all that he spied as dishonest, unfair or wretched. Sweet-natured and hilarious in person, on paper, he was terrifyingly sharp-witted, and sparing of no prisoners. In a just world, he would be seen as the greatest of recent Irish poets, and even so, is recognised in anthologies and critical studies everywhere as the most acute, savagely clever, and startling of Irish political poets. The measure of his unexpected reach - a 'Heineken poe

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