Patrick Kavanagh

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For English poet Patrick J. Kavanagh (1931-), see P. J. Kavanagh.

Patrick Kavanagh
Born	October 21, 1904(1904-10-21) Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland
Died	November 30, 1967 (aged 63) Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	Irish
Writing period	1942–1967
Genres	Irish poet, novelist
Subjects	Irish life, religion, environment

Patrick Kavanagh (Irish: Pádraig Caomhánaigh) (21 October 1904 – 30 November 1967) was an Irish poet.

1 Birth and early life
2 Early work and recognition
3 Later career and death
- 3.1 Language
- 3.2 Themes
4 Legacy
5 Notes
6 References
7 The Poems
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] Birth and early life

Kavanagh was born in Mucker, Inniskeen, County Monaghan in 1904. His father was a shoemaker, and Patrick also entered the trade after leaving school. Kavanagh never got beyond 6th class, he once said "I majored in kicking a rag ball", but his education continued as he sat at his father's side and as he carried out the routine chores on their farm. For twenty years he lived a life as an ordinary young Irish farmer of the period, toiling for pocket money in fields he expected some day to inherit. Like all the other local farmers, he bought and sold at fairs and markets, went to Sunday Mass, attended wakes, funerals and weddings of neighbours, played pitch and toss at the crossroads, cycled to dances. He was also goalkeeper for the Inniskeen Gaelic football team. It was through these every day moments that something of life revealed itself to Kavanagh.

Kavanagh began writing verses at a young age. He began submitting poems to local and national newspapers. He became increasingly dissatisfied with life as a small farmer, and in 1938 he left Inniskeen for London and remained there for about five months. In 1939 he finally settled in Dublin.

[edit] Early work and recognition

When in Dublin, Kavanagh worked as a journalist, writing a gossip column in the then Irish Press from 1942 to 1944 and acted as film critic for that same publication from 1945 to 1949. His rural background was reflected in his first volume of poems, “’’The Ploughman and Other Poems’’” which was published in 1936 and two years later “’’The Green Fool’’”, which is variously described as autobiographical or Stage Irish biography. By the early 1940s his poems were beginning to attract attention of the literacy circle and in 1942 ‘’The Great Hunger’’, which is probably his most revered work, appeared. ‘’The Great Hunger’’ however did not enjoy unanimous or universal approval and all copies of ‘’The Horizan’’ literary magazine in which it was published were seized by Irish police on the order of the Minister for Justice because the work was an overt and scything attack on the sexual and religious oppression of the Catholic Church on rural Ireland and considered obscene. Today, it is considered to be the work of genius. His classic novel ‘’Tarry Flynn’’ was published in 1948, also banned in Ireland, was a very true to life account of rural life and would later be made into a play and performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1966. Until this day it still continues to be one of classics of the Irish stage.

[edit] Later career and death

In 1954 two major events changed Kavanagh's life: firstly he embarked on a libel action and ended up being defeated, then shortly after he lost the action he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was admitted to hospital where he had a lung removed. It was while recovering from this operation by relaxing on the banks of the Grand Canal in Dublin that Kavanagh rediscovered his poetic vision, he began to appreciate nature and his surroundings and took his inspiration from this for much of his latter poetry, and a new phase of poetry followed. Kavanagh was now receiving the acclaim, which he had always felt he deserved. He gave lectures at UCD and in the United States, having published his own journal in 1952, "Kavanagh’s Weekly: A Journal of Literature and Politics" which ran to some 13 editions. He represented Ireland at literature symposia and became a judge of the Guinness Poetry Awards.

Kavanagh got ill at the opening performance of "Tarry Flynn" at the Abbey Theatre and he died later that week in a Dublin nursing home on November 30, 1967.

[edit] Language

Kavanagh's use of language is a vital ingredient in his work in attempting to create a sense of the mystery and magic of a child's mind. Kavanagh uses words in a new and imergerating fashion. He uses Neologism, the creation or coinage of new words, is a common element in Kavanagh's language. He achieves this by joining two or more existing words together in a hyphenated form to create a new word, for example ‘ "clod-conceived"; "thick-tongued"; "green-life-conquering". Kavanagh also creates new words by coining adverbs and adjectives from existing nouns. Again the effect is to create a sense of mystery and wonder. In "Lines Written" words such as 'stilly', 'greeny', 'Niagariously' and 'Parnassian' represent this feature of Kavanagh's language. Related to this is Kavanagh's habit of combining existing words to form a new one. In "Advent", the word 'dreeping' is a fusion of the words dripping and creeping (also used by James Joyce in Ulysses) which is designed to create in the mind of the reader the qualities of both words. Words like these reflect the creativity not just of Kavanagh, but of the uninhabited mind of the child.

[edit] Hyperbole

This is a further feature of Kavanagh's language which reflects the powers of his imagination. In "Lines Written..." Kavanagh speaks of -: "The tremendous silence of mid-July"; he states that the water is moved through the lock Niagarously, that fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges, that the towns dotted along the banks of the canal produce mythologies. He suggests that the canal boats are Parnassian islands. In "Canal Bank", hyperbole is also evident in phrases such as delirious beat, fabulous grass and gaping need. In "Inniskeen Road", the comparison with Alexander Selkirk leads him to consider Inniskeen Road as "a mile of kingdom". "Advent" contains many examples of hyperbole -: "The spirit-shocking wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill", "the luxury of a child's soul".

[edit] Allusion

Kavanagh's use of allusion is a very important aspect of his language. In "Stony Grey Soil", he refers to the poise and stride of Apollo. In "Advent" he alludes to the nativity-: "old stables where Time begins". Colloquial language is an intrinsic element of Kavanagh's style. His phraseology is conversational and many of his phrases owe their origin to his Monaghan background-: "Among descent men to who burrow dung", "he stared at me half eyed" and "every blooming thing".

[edit] Structure

Kavanagh's poem's ability of the sonnet form which is a structural feature of "Inniskeen Road", "Advent", "Lines Written..." and Canal Bank Walk". In "Inniskeen Road", Kavanagh combines features of the Petrarchan and Shakespearean forms. Stanzaic pattern reflects the Patriarchal subdivision of a sonnet to an octet and sestet. In the octet a picture is painted by the poet and the problems are posed. The poets own personal response is contained in the sestet. The opening stanza can be subdivided into two quatrains each containing a separate picture of Monaghan life. The sestet also can be divided into a quatrain and couplet, therefore mirroring the Shakespearean division into three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme of the poem is also Shakespearean-: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. "Advent" represents Kavanagh's particular use of the sonnet form. The poem is an amalgam of two sonnets. The stanzaic pattern is neither Petrarchan nor Shakespearean. The opening two stanzas each contain seven lines with the third stanza representing an entire sonnet. The division of the sonnet into two septets is unusual and Kavanagh formulates a rhyme scheme to parallel this-: aabbccbd, aab, aacc. Stanza three is again different as Kavanagh reverts to the Shakespearean rhyming technique -: abab, cded, fgfg, hh. The thought pattern of the third stanza follows that set out by the opening two stanza with a natural pause occurring at the end of the seventeenth line. The reason why Kavanagh does not create a fourth stanza is that the rhythm of the third stanza reflects the excitement that Kavanagh associates with having rediscovered "the luxury of a child's soul". The three stanzas in the poem reflects the three stages in Kavanagh's bid to regain this position - penance, forgiveness and grace.

"Lines Written..." is fashioned completely in the Petrarchan style. Both the thought pattern and the rhyming scheme follow an octet-sestet sublimation. "Stony Grey Soil" and "Memory..." are reminiscent of ballad technique in that they each feature four line stanzas, however, Kavanagh doesn't stick rigidly to the rhyming schemes of the ballad again displaying his ability to individualise a fashion or feature.

[edit] Themes

Religion is a dominant feature in Kavanagh's poetry both as a theme and as source of imagery. Religion features thematically in "Advent", "Canal Bank Walk" and in a minor way in "Stony Grey Soil". "Advent" derives from religion in both it's theme and main source of imagery. The theme of the poem is penance, forgiveness and grace which reflects the Catholic church’s seasons of Advent, the nativity and the beginning of the new church year. Kavanagh formulates his wish to return to the state of innocence as a child within the imagery of religion using original sin to represent acquired knowledge, penance as a main act of contrition and the grace of the forgiven soul as the newly required state of innocents. In "Canal Bank Walk" the theme is one of redemption reflecting baptism as Kavanagh draws analogies between the waters of the baptismal font and the water of the canal. In "Stony Grey Soil", Kavanagh refers to the 'peasants prayer'-a recognition of the close relationship between religion and life in his native Monaghan.

Kavanagh was unquestionably a poet place formed to a large extent by his experiences in his native Monaghan and later in his adopted Dublin. "Stony Grey Soil" depicts best, Kavanagh's preoccupation with environment. It shows the bitterness and the tragedy of his life there. His awareness is hypersensitive and this allowed him to fear the brutality of the 'Stony Grey Soil'. In the poem he is ill at ease in an environment and culture he condemns. He uses verbs such as clogged, and burgled to display his sense of desperation and loss. In the first five stanzas of the poem, Kavanagh attacks the dreariness and drabness of his native environment. It is one of 'steaming dung hills' that gave rise to a stumble and a thick-tongued mumble. It was an environment dominated by agriculture, here symbolised by the plough - a plough that robbed him of the happiness and gaiety of youth -: "Your mandrill strained, your coulter blunted In the smooth lea-field of my brow." However, the change that occurs in the final two and a half stanzas suggests that Kavanagh has a love-hate relationship with his native environment. Although Kavanagh arrived in Dublin in 1939, leaving behind his sixteen acres of stony grey soil, it was not, until the mid 1950's that his adopted city provided the environmental background to his work. The summer of 1955 and the banks of the Grand Canal in Dublin are the time and place which moved Kavanagh to write "Canal Bank Walk" and "Lines Written...". Kavanagh's attitude to the environment changed dramatically following his operation for lung cancer. He said "As a poet I was born in or about 1955, the place of my birth being the banks of the Grand Canal". This new appreciation of the environment, his vision of Eden is evident in his novel "Tarry Flynn", where he wrote "O the rich beauty of the weeds in the ditches, Tarry's heart cried: the lush Nettles and Docks and tuffs of grass. Life pouring out in critical abundance." In the novel he also wrote "Without ambition, without desire, the beauty of the world pared in thought his unresting mind." These two sentences describe exactly the moods of Kavanagh in 'Canal Bank Walk' and 'Lines Written...". Here the environment is glorified in a pantheistic manner. Kavanagh uses hyperbole and many neologisms in an attempt to demonstrate the magnificence of nature as experimented by the innocent mind of a child or of the poet reformed to the state of grace. The opposing attitudes expressed by Kavanagh to the environments of Monaghan and Dublin reflect more on his state of mind than on the environments themselves.

Patrick Kavanagh statue along the Grand Canal in Dublin

[edit] Legacy

When the Irish Times compiled a list of favourite Irish poems in 2000, ten of his poems were in the top fifty, and Kavanagh was rated the second favourite poet behind WB Yeats. "On Raglan Road," (Fáinne Geal an Lae), composed by Thomas Connellan in the 17th century. As such it has been performed by Van Morrison, Luke Kelly, Dire Straits, Billy Bragg, Sinéad O'Connor, Joan Osborne and many other singers. There is a statue of Kavanagh by Dublin's Grand Canal, inspired by his poem "Lines written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin": " O commemorate me where there is water, canal water preferably, so stilly greeny at the heart of summer. Brother commemorate me thus beautifully."

There is also a statue of Patrick Kavanagh located outside the Irish pub and restaurant, Raglan Road, at Walt Disney World's Downtown Disney. The annual Patrick Kavanagh Weekend takes place from the 24th of November-26th of November, 2007 in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland.

The actor Russell Crowe has stated he is a fan of Kavanaghs, "I like the clarity and the emotiveness of (Patrick) Kavanagh. I like how he combines the kind of mystic into really clear, evocative work that can make you glad you are alive". In February 2000, Crowe quoted Kavanagh during a lengthy acceptance speech at the annual BAFTA awards. When he became aware that the Kavanagh quote had been cut from the final broadcast he became aggressive with the BBC Producer responsible.[2] Every March 17, after the St Patrick's day parade, a group of Kavanagh's friends gather at the Kavanagh seat on the banks of the Grand Canal at Mespil road in his honour.

Achievement's

[edit] Poetry

1936 - Ploughman and Other Poems
1947 - A Soul For Sale
1958 - Recent Poems
1960 - Come Dance with Kitty Stobling and Other Poems
1964 - Collected Poems
1971 - The Great Hunger
1972 - The Complete Poems of Patrick Kavanagh
1978 - Lough Derg

[edit] Fiction

1944 - Three Glimpses of Life
1946 - The Cobbler and the Football Team
1946 - Stars in Muddy Puddles
1946 - One Summer Evening in the Month of June
1947 - Four Picturizations
1947 - Feasts and Feasts
1947 - The Good Child
1948 - Tarry Flynn
1977 - By Night Unstarred

[edit] Biographical

1937 - Childhood of an Irishman
1938 - The Green Fool
1964 - Self Portrait

[edit] Notes

He often stayed with his publisher, Martin Green & his wife, Fiona in their house in Tottenham Street. Fitzrovia. It was at this time Martin produced Kavanagh's Collected Poems for Martin Brian & O'Keeffe 1972 (ISBN 0 85616 100 4)