Epic - Patrick Kavanagh

I have lived… …land

I have lived in important places, times / When great events were decided: who owned / That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land

• This is a grand and forceful opening

• However we soon realise just how local and parochial the poem becomes

• Alliteration

• Assonance

I heard the… …waist

I heard the Duffys shouting “Damn your soul” / And old McCabe, stripped to the waist

• Local family names ground the poem in the local, hardworking land of Kavanagh’s life

That was… …important?

That was the year of the Munich bother. Which / Was more important?

• “Munich bother” is Kavanagh’s wry description of a crisis just before the outbreak of World War II

• Kavanagh is hesitating between the importance of the local or international row.

• Rhetorical question

Homer’s…

Homer’s ghost

• Homer was a Greek epic poet who wrote the Iliad about a dispute between the Greeks and the Trojans which led to the long, bloody Trojan Wars.

I made the… …importance.

I made the Iliad from such / A local row. Gods make their own importance.