The Poetry of Derek MahonDerek Mahon is one of the leading poets of his time, both in Ireland and beyond, famously offering a perspective that is displaced from as much as grounded in his native country. From prodigious beginnings to prolific maturity, he has been, through thick and thin, through troubled times and other, a writer profoundly committed to the art of poetry and the craft of making verse. He has also been no-less a committed reviser of his work, believing the poem to be more than a record in verse, but a work of art never finished. This virtuoso study by Hugh Haughton provides the most comprehensive account imaginable of Mahon's oeuvre. Haughton's brilliant writing always serves and illuminates the poetry, yielding extraordinary insights on almost every page. The poetry, its revisions and reception, are the subject here, but so thorough is the approach that what is offered also amounts indirectly to an intellectual biography of the poet and with it an account of Northern Irish poetry vital to our understanding of the times. |
Contents
| 12 | |
Lives | |
The Snow Party | |
The Sea in Winter | |
The Hunt by Night and Antarctica | |
The Hudson Letter | |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Afterlives allusion artist Auden autobiographical Beckett Belfast Camus Carrowdore Collected Poems contemporary Cork Courtyards crisis cultural dark Derek Mahon Disused Shed dream Dublin earlier echoes Emory University English epigraph evokes exile Faber and Faber fin de siècle Gallery Press ghost Glengormley Harbour Lights Heaney Heaney's heart historical Honest Ulsterman Howth Head Hudson Letter Hunt by Night imagines intertextual Irish poetry ironic J. G. Farrell Kinsale later lines literary live London Longley lyric MacNeice Mahon Papers Mahon's poem memory metaphysical Michael Longley Night-Crossing North Northern Ireland Northern Irish offers opening original Ovid painting play poem's poet poet's poetic political portrait Protestant Rage for Order recalls reference reflects represented Review rhyme rubbish Sappho says Seamus Heaney sense sequence silence Snow Party stanza star suggests translation Ulster verse vision words writing Yaddo Yeats Yeats's Yellow Book York