Facing the Music:: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century. [Hardcover]

Eamon Grennan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

In Facing the Music, poet and critic Eamon Grennan gives comprehensive and imaginative life to the modern Irish poetic tradition. With Yeats as his starting point, these essays constitute a suite of intimate engagements with the matter and manner of the poetic intelligence as it declares itself in poets as diverse as Kavanagh, Muldoon, Kinsella, and McGuckian, and as it is found in the work of James Joyce and John McGahern. What most distinguishes this luminous collection is its author's tolerant breadth of response, his ability to sympathize equally with poets whose creative aims and means are very different from one another, but who between them compose much of the map of modern and contemporary Irish poetry. Such sympathetic readings give the reader a powerful sense of how Irish poetry in this century has kept pace with the often intractable public and private life of the island, north and south. Facing the Music reveals the workings of the intuitive spirit of poetry in the moral life of twentieth-century Ireland. Eamon Greenan is the Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English at Vassar College.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Eamon Greenan is the Dexter M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English at Vassar College.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 436 pages
• Publisher: Fordham University Press; 2 edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1881871282
• ISBN-13: 978-1881871286
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,000,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent survey of modern Irish poetic traditions., February 3, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Facing the Music:: Irish Poetry in the Twentieth Century. (Hardcover)

Poetic and critic Grennan provides a fine, comprehensive review of the modern Irish poetic tradition, using Yeats as a starting point and providing essays which consider the modern evolution of Irish poetry. An excellent survey of authors and titles evolves in an absorbing, intriguing discussion which will attract any with special interest in Irish poetry.