Patrick Crotty
difficult to decide when I can officially count this as read, but I've owned it for a year now and I don't think there's many poems left in it that I haven't read at least once.
One of my very favourite books that I own it has pride of place on my bookshelf now that's moved away from my bedside locker What a beautiful book! It's huge withpages.
Such a wonderful present I know it will be a beloved companion over the coming years, With a foreword by Seamus Heaney, I just can't wait to get dug in, In the preface to this book it states that “This is the most comprehensive and confident anthology of Irish poetry yet” it goes on to say that “The comprehensiveness is due to the inclusion of a much greater selection of work from the earlier periods, the confidence to the sureness about the artistic quality and significance of that work and of the writing done later, in the decades since the death of W.
B. Yeats”. This is a collection of writing that ably demonstrates that as a literary nation Ireland punches well above its weight, especially when you take in the fact that the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland share a land mass that is only,sq km,.
sq mi, making it the third largest island in Europe, or about the size of South Carolina,, sq km and with a combined population only slightly larger, and yet it has produced amongst its writers four Nobel Laureates, The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, features the writing of three of the Laureates W, B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney the fourth George Bernard Shaw as well as the poetry of Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Moore, Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, Eavan Boland and James Joyce to name just a few.
Poetry in Ireland is a genuinely ancient cultural practice, how ancient is hard to determine, although there is evidence to the existence of writing predating the arrival of Christianity early in the fifth century.
This is the starting point of the book as over its one thousand or so pages it charts Irelands literary culture through Christian and preChristian attitudes, to Gaels and Vikings, Nationalism and Unionism, Catholicism and Protestantism, the Irish
and English languages, also managing to encompass Latin, Old Norse and Old French right up to the vibrant poetry of modern Ireland, celebrating around,years of this nations poetry and verse.
What makes this book really magnificent is that many of the verse translations were specially commissioned, withnew English translations by the greatest poets currently working, including Seamus Heaney also wrote the preface, Michael Longley, Bernard O Donoghue and Ciarán Carson.
Not counting Anonymous, this collection features over one hundred and eighty poets, and although you could quite easily play spot the missing poet, I think that is missing the point yes there are several poets working today I would love to see in this collection, but then who do you leave out, my choice may not be yours and with this Anthology already at over a thousand pages, how much larger would it need to be to embrace all our favourites.
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, ably demonstrates Irelands status as a literary superpower, whether through those poems/verses that have only survived due to some monks recording of them or whether it is the poetry that still flows like molten lava from those poets writing today.
This anthology offers a wonderful insight into a nation that somehow has managed to not only write as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, said of poetry “The best words in the best order”, but have in the process influenced the rest of the world.
One of my very favourite books that I own it has pride of place on my bookshelf now that's moved away from my bedside locker What a beautiful book! It's huge withpages.
Such a wonderful present I know it will be a beloved companion over the coming years, With a foreword by Seamus Heaney, I just can't wait to get dug in, In the preface to this book it states that “This is the most comprehensive and confident anthology of Irish poetry yet” it goes on to say that “The comprehensiveness is due to the inclusion of a much greater selection of work from the earlier periods, the confidence to the sureness about the artistic quality and significance of that work and of the writing done later, in the decades since the death of W.
B. Yeats”. This is a collection of writing that ably demonstrates that as a literary nation Ireland punches well above its weight, especially when you take in the fact that the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland share a land mass that is only,sq km,.
sq mi, making it the third largest island in Europe, or about the size of South Carolina,, sq km and with a combined population only slightly larger, and yet it has produced amongst its writers four Nobel Laureates, The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, features the writing of three of the Laureates W, B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney the fourth George Bernard Shaw as well as the poetry of Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Moore, Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, Eavan Boland and James Joyce to name just a few.
Poetry in Ireland is a genuinely ancient cultural practice, how ancient is hard to determine, although there is evidence to the existence of writing predating the arrival of Christianity early in the fifth century.
This is the starting point of the book as over its one thousand or so pages it charts Irelands literary culture through Christian and preChristian attitudes, to Gaels and Vikings, Nationalism and Unionism, Catholicism and Protestantism, the Irish
and English languages, also managing to encompass Latin, Old Norse and Old French right up to the vibrant poetry of modern Ireland, celebrating around,years of this nations poetry and verse.
What makes this book really magnificent is that many of the verse translations were specially commissioned, withnew English translations by the greatest poets currently working, including Seamus Heaney also wrote the preface, Michael Longley, Bernard O Donoghue and Ciarán Carson.
Not counting Anonymous, this collection features over one hundred and eighty poets, and although you could quite easily play spot the missing poet, I think that is missing the point yes there are several poets working today I would love to see in this collection, but then who do you leave out, my choice may not be yours and with this Anthology already at over a thousand pages, how much larger would it need to be to embrace all our favourites.
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry, ably demonstrates Irelands status as a literary superpower, whether through those poems/verses that have only survived due to some monks recording of them or whether it is the poetry that still flows like molten lava from those poets writing today.
This anthology offers a wonderful insight into a nation that somehow has managed to not only write as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, said of poetry “The best words in the best order”, but have in the process influenced the rest of the world.
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry features the work of the greatest Irish poets, from the monks of the ancient monasteries to the Nobel laureates W, B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney, from Jonathan Swift and Oliver Goldsmith to Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, along with a profusion of lyrics, love poems, satires, ballads and songs.
Reflecting Ireland's complex past and lively present, this collection of Irish verse is an indispensable guide to the history, culture and romance of one of Europe's oldest civilizations,
In his introduction to this new Penguin Classics edition, Patrick Crotty explores the traditions of poetry in Ireland, and relates the rich variety of the poems to the long and frequently troubled history of the island.