The Book of Irish Verse: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present [Paperback]

John Montague (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Bristol Park Books; Bristol Park Books ed. edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0884861929
• ISBN-13: 978-0884861928
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,035,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All poetry lovers should have this book, October 27, 2004

By 

Ruth Henriquez Lyon (Duluth, Minnesota USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Irish Verse: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present (Paperback)

This anthology, selected and introduced by John Montague, begins with ancient Irish poetry and takes the reader mid-way through the 20th century. We begin with "The First Invasion of Ireland," from The Book of Invasions, and move on to some of the beautiful chants and incantations of Amergin, the chief bard of the Milesians: "I am a stag: of seven tines/I am a flood: across a plain/ I am a wind: on a deep lake/I am a tear: the Sun lets fall. . ." These ancient selections provide some of the best pagan Celtic reading I've come across.

Montague then guides us through some writings of the early monastics, such as "Marban, A Hermit Speaks": "Young of all things, /bring faith to me,/ guard my door:/ the rough, unloved/ wild dogs, tall deer,/ quiet does." These writings give one the sense of a people so intimately interwoven into natural patterns and rhythms that there is no feeling of separation from Nature.

All the early selections of course are translated from the Gaelic, and we do not get into the poems written in English until later. According to Montague's excellent introduction, most poets composed in their native tongue until the nineteenth century, at which point most began writing in English. "Irish literature in English is in the uneasy position that the larger part of its past lies in another language," writes Montague. Thus we read in Montague's own poem "A Grafted Tongue," "Dumb,/ Bloodied, the severed/ head now chokes to/ speak another tongue."

But even before the use of Gaelic was waning, Irish culture was being systematically crushed by the British occupiers. The war against Ireland's native culture began before Elizabethan times. Thus, in the later poets Montague finds "a racial sensibility striving to be reborn; is it strange that it comes through with a mournful sound, like a medium's wail?": "I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night;/ I went to the window to see the sight;/ All the Dead that ever I knew/ Going one by one and two by two. . ." (William Allingham (1824-1889).

Even in the later poets of Christianized Ireland, who write in English, the pagan past is never quite obscured. Patrick MacDonogh (1902-1961) writes in "Now the Holy Lamp of Love," "Cradling hands are all too small/And your hair is drenched with dew;/ Love though strong can build no wall/ From the hungry fox for you." And Denis Devlin (1908-1959) writes in "Ascension" of a visionary experience of blinding light. He begins with "Aengus, the god of Love, my shoulders brushed/With birds, you could say lark or thrush or thieves. . ./" but moves on to "For it was God's Son foreign to our moor:/ When I looked out the window, all was white,/And what's beloved in the heart was sure,. . ."

In so many of these poems there is beauty, grace, and felicity, juxtaposed with suffering and sometimes bitterness. Contemporary poet Paul Muldoon (born 1951) writes in "Dancers At the Moy" of horses who tore "at briars and whins,/ Ate the flesh of each other/Like people in famine. . .The local people gathered/Up the white skeletons./Horses buried for years/Under the foundations/Give their earthen floors/The ease of trampolines." Here, suffering and loss become the foundation for continued life.

A complex national character manifests through these poems. Reading them, we see the English language being borne into new poetic realms by a nation for whom English is "a grafted tongue." A wonderful book.

1 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a joy!, August 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book of Irish Verse: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from the Sixth Century to the Present (Paperback)

This book was just wonderful. Being a Celt by blood, I was inspired by these wonderful works included in this collection. I hope that there will be more of this kind of compilations that will continue to come out.