Research Catalog

Title

Reading the ground : the poetry of Thomas Kinsella / Brian John.

Author

John, Brian, 1935-

Publication

Washington, D.C. : Catholic University of America Press, c1996.

Supplementary Content

Table of contents

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 275 p.; 23 cm

Summary

• In this comprehensive study of Thomas Kinsella's poetry, Brian John explores the poet's development within both the Irish and the English contexts and defines the nature of his poetic achievement. He also offers a new reading of Kinsella's evolving relationship to one of his major literary forebears, W. B. Yeats. What becomes clear is the formidable accomplishment of a poet, now writing at the height of his powers, whose substantial body of work warrants comparison with the grand masters of twentieth-century literature in English - with Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett.
• Beginning with Kinsella's first volume of poetry in 1956 and concluding with his most recent work, From Centre City (1994), John traces the evolution of the poet's style and vision from the formal lyricism of his early volumes, through the long narrative poems of his middle period, to his later sequences of spare, laconic poems that are increasingly rich in polyphony and intertextuality. He finds that the formal structure and mellifluous cadence of Kinsella's early poetry, indebted to the works of past masters like Auden, Eliot, and Yeats, give way to experimentalism, to a dislocated poetry that is often lacking in closure. And, in his later writing, diverse exemplars, ranging from early Irish literature and myth and the eighteenth-century Irish poet Aogan O Rathaille to the psychoanalysis of Jung and the music of Gustav Mahler and Sean O Riada, aid Kinsella in tracing his personal and poetic inheritance.

Subjects

• Ireland > In literature
• Kinsella, Thomas > Criticism and interpretation

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-269) and index.

Additional Formats (note)

• Also issued online.

Contents

1. The Double Shadow -- 2. Initiation into Experience -- 3. Balance in the Violent Zone -- 4. Imaginative Bedrock -- 5. Seeing How the Whole Thing Works -- 6. Reading the Ground.

Call Number

JFD 14-3784

ISBN

• 0813208378 (cl : alk. paper)
• 9780813208374 (cl : alk. paper)
• 0813208386
• 9780813208381
• 08l3208386 (pa : alk. paper) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

95017095

OCLC

32430786

Author

John, Brian, 1935-

Title

Reading the ground : the poetry of Thomas Kinsella / Brian John.

Imprint

Washington, D.C. : Catholic University of America Press, c1996.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-269) and index.

Additional Formats

Also issued online.

Connect to:

Table of contents

Other Form:

Online version: John, Brian, 1935- Reading the ground. Washington, D.C. : Catholic University of America Press, c1996 (OCoLC)603753822

Research Call Number

JFD 14-3784