Literary Critic, Hugh Kenner Reviews

Poetry of Desmond Egan

Draft of Lecture delivered by Professor Hugh Kenner at the New England Regional Conference of the ACIS (unpublished)

I will spend just a few minutes on the interesting case of a poet who has been acclaimed everywhere but in Ireland, and whom I know pretty well - I indicate that amount of bias and raise the interesting question of why Irish readers find it so difficult to see him as a major Irish poet - I'm thinking of Desmond Egan. If you've never heard of him, that is part of my theme. Desmond was born in 1936. I think what he actually ilustrates is that we have gotten to the point where it is possible to be an authentic Irish poet without every raising the question: what consitutes Irish identity?

I think that is what Irish readers miss in him. They feel that he is not adressing the main issue which is what does it mean to be Irish. Montague obviously does address this issue. Heaney obviously does address it. Egan is curiously indifferent to it. To my way of thinking, this is an enormous advance. It's a move forward of almost another generation. Let me be particular. This is a man who grew up bilingual in Ireland and whose Irish scholarship is sufficient to correct those who write in to the Irish Times on question of Irish language. Of course, he also has various un-irish things like a love of greek, latin and music and he sees absolutely nothing wrong with learning things about the poet's craft from the likes of Ezra Pound. Yeats learned some things from Pound but only having to do with the omission of openness and adjectives. Let me give you a sample: there's a suite of poems called Three Songs from the Story of Ossian - Fionn's Song . This could be mistaken for Pound though it would have been impossible without him. Simply in the care taken with what vowel follows what other vowel.

Horse, horse in the window Ashes of a dawn Whisper to the ceiling Someone's gone

If I did not tell you it was Fionn's Song , you wouldn't make any particular Irish connection because there is no effort to lay on local colour of any sort. May as well read Niamh's Song - it's the third one:

Niamh's Song talk with me Love one last time down that river of old dreams turn and smile your tragic smile goodbye Oisin goodbye me what turned wrong: I know and don't - you used make this new world real love what will we do alone? goodby Oisin goodby me now you'll turn inot the songs that you sang? now our summer fall in leaves: kiss and break but don't look back goodbye Oisin goodbye me all the place that are you in my thoughts fade! like hawthorn afte spring no two loved as much - and lost goodbye Oisin goodbye me

Those have the limitations of love poems written to be set to music but I know of nothing quite like them. Way back of them is Pound and also way back of them is Irish mythologicla material handled perfectly straight without any effort to make it quiant or to insert fal de das, little sprigs of archaic language. I'll read two more and then rest my case. Here is the second part of a two part poem, called Clare - The Burren. I chose it because it locates its subject in a speifici place out in the West, in a clearly recognizable landscape which looks like the top of the moon.

Clare: The Burren 1. worn cloud has torn from turfbank hills which razor the horizon above Ballyvaughan on ecurrach pricks the blue space filing overflowing them and throygh the draped shadows a turlough of leaked sunlight discovering mooncolourings a dog's bark fades from nowhere someone following three insect cows criies like its sound while everything a January moment catches its breath 11. the redhead schoolboy (farmer's son) shyly led the way across a livid wilderness of limestone striated with the ogham of ages and there it stood the great dolmen! tipping out from supporting flags one massive lintel tons of jagged uncorroded rock balanced so austerely it hardly touched those gnarled flanges limstone rising upward lifting itself - rough parthenon - beyond itself skied pointing away from the Burren the restless seas and from the corpses it covered (Claremen's bones?) their lint of flesh filtered like sea stiffened into that stone hewed bevelled anbove them thousands of years ago yesterday 111. a pub in Kilfenora some bigassed lass from Ennis is singing her tailend off tonight (mascaraed eyes a little apop) ... I often think of home Dee ool ee ay! smiling at her audience as she batters it out pointing towards heaven like one of Leonardo's women on the high note which should but doesn't shatter her glass yet the locals (who know their music) listen not speaking not even drinking concentrating on the floor while that voice goes stalking every nook Another song from the lady! townies grin-away such courtesy but outside down the field of moonlight later they pass by that ancient cross

 

The 'yesterday' is the familiar collapse of history in which everything in ireland is yesterday. I once heard a man outside Trinity College develop a passionate argument. He seemed he might burst a blood vessel. The man was talking aobut Oliver Cromwell - you'd think cromwell had raped his mother.

But the other interesting detail in that poem he uses the phrase 'rough Parthenon'. I cannot think of another Irish poet who would not have thought the Parthenon would have ruined the Irish ambiance. But it never bothers Egan at all. European culture is one. Synge, oddly enough, would have liked that detail. The next poem I am going to read is a very short one: Thucydides and Lough Owel . Some of these poems have to be seen as well as heard.

Thucydides and Lough Owel   teal poised on ice above the lake's throb this blue translucence flexing across rocks frozen sprays of fern - remind me of your History for if the stretched town is become part of nature so are your sentences like gulls they cry down the cold shores

 

The interesting thing here is that it is half way through the poem before you realise the poet is speaking to Thucydides. Thucydides's sentences acquire the same kind of concreteness as those birds crying down these cold shores, to about as much comprehension, I suppose.

One last poem brings the Kavanagh heritage very much to the fore. This is one of a series of poems published by Egan in 1983 called Seeing Double . Not all but most of the Seeing Double Poems use the following format - as the lay-out is unusual. Along side the main poem there is a kind of marginalia, another poem entirely, about one work per line, in an entirely different voice. The poem is called Hitchhiker - it is very interesting. This poem, by the way, is based on a true anecdote and you'll pick up its topical relevance quickly.

 

Hitchhiker

What makes you stop? the empty roadside full of his middleage a bag in the verge I leaned to the passenger door he ran and startling as some forgotten accent on the phone The North was sitting beside me outside Mullingar his voice softly accepted awful things it held too much like the travelling bag including all that had happened yesterday his cottage bombed and smoking up into the Dungannon sky a decision standing there with daughter and bike a few arrangements then off on an unapproved road through the long violent darkness the cold footing it all night for the border he fished out three polaroid snaps one of the wife shot accidentally dead in a bank at 25 two of his First Communion daughter: yesterday was the only time since tha tshe cried (he said to the photos) when he farmed her out to neighbours along with the collie dog after the killers got life his Protestant job had been next to go no hard feeling: what choice had the boss if he valued his kneecaps or house? and what could anyone do now? we gave him a dinner and a few bob another Southern lift out of town left him lke a tinker hanging round a filling station on the Galway road unitl the mirror swallowed him up no much point adding to this or imposing some treacherous thought for the day why must we demand virtue of the poor? his name was Jim something he used to play for Tyrone and what I mostly remember a few weeks later are the photographs with their adhesive blots

Jack 'n Jill climb up no hill but Jack sits down anyhow produces his public pipe a match hmm two! puff puff careful slow philosophic smoke puff puff puff cheeks large black glasses a gentle smile good very good by gar it's grand grand let's see now what were we discussing ah yes hurling hurling hurling Jim Mackey or Christy each unique or course but I think on balance . . Ring huh? the Sunday lunch with my three butties grand lads you should take up the pipe grand grand grand

 

This is perfectly easy to follow. A political anecdote, a man, a refugee from the North who has lost his wife, scared for his lfe, left his daughter behind. Down the right hand margin, in italics, in the marginalia is this;

Hitchhiker - marginalia

That's where the Kavanagh legacy comes in. That's the wisdom of the elders. That's the famous Irish gift of the gab 'grand, grand, grand'.

I hope I have piqued your curiosity about one poet. The qeustion why nobody ever seems to mention him in Irealnd is very interesteing and as I say I think it is simply because the qustion of national identity has ceased to matter for him. It leaves people looking around for clues. It makes me think we have moved a generation beyond - even the accomplishment of Heaney.

Desmond Egan's Peace poem -- translated into 28 langauges for Millennium Peace Year

Read Desmond Egan's analysis of Hopkins's As Kingfishers Catch Fire

Desmond Egan, Poet, Artistic Director of Hopkins Summer School

Hear Desmond Egan read his Peace poem at International Festival

Peace Poem -- translated into 28 languages for Millennium Year

Egan's Elegies Reviewed

Desmond Egan, a Bibliography

Egan's Hopkins Poem