LC ENGLISH POETRY Bookend Quotes

“The desire to be heard, - that is the impulse behind writing poems, for me” (Adrienne Rich)

Good for opening

“Two lines can save a life” (Paula Meehan)

Highlights her belief in the power poetry has

While Dr Thompson remarks that Meehan, quote:

> *gives voice to her people and places* 

Opening quote kind of

"Mahon's poetry is characterized by a deep sense of humanity and a profound understanding of the human condition." - Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate in Literature, in his introduction to Derek Mahon's Selected Poems.

Quote about derek mahon

The phrase "metaphysical poets" was first used by Samuel Johnson in Lives of the Poets (1779–81). He used the term to describe and insult  a group of 17th century poets which included John Donne. In describing their use of wit and metaphor, he notes that the most  unlike each other ideas are “yoked by violence together”;  The term stuck, but the reputation of the poets were tarnished for a while until Herbert Grierson’s collection of metaphysical poems in 1921.

quote about john donne with reference

 'the elaboration ... of a figure of speech to the furthest stages to which ingenuity can carry it'. (TS Eliot)

This is known as the metaphysical **conceit**.

Even now there are places where a thought might grow - Mahon, Dissused shed in CO. Wexford

dfds

“I said he is a poet of the perimeter, meditating on the centre, with a mixture of amusement and pain. He is not, or he is very rarely, at the centre of his poems.” Brendan Kennelly, ‘Derek Mahon’s Humane Perspective’, in Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Irish Poetry, ed. Terence Brown & Nicholas Grene, Macmillan 1989

ssss

Seamus Deane remarks that Mahon’s poetry ‘expresses a longing to be free from history’;

Yay