Collected Poems - Softcover

Hartnett, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852352957 ISBN 13: 9781852352950

Publisher: Gallery Books, 1960

Synopsis

Michael Hartnett (1941-1999) had a distinguished and highly respected career in his native Ireland. Even before the publication of his 1968 collection with the Dolmen Press, Anatomy of a Cliche, his poems earned critical esteem and, in time, they were recognized by the Irish Poetry Prize in 1980, a Poetry Ireland Choice in 1987, and awards from the Irish-American Cultural Institute and the American Ireland Fund. He was a member of Ireland's distinguished arts academy, Aosdana. From brief early lyrics to more extended meditations, and including a number of unpublished gems, this collection represents forty years of coruscating art.

About this title

From Booklist

Hartnett, whose recent death was mourned by all lovers of the Irish language, is best known for the poem "Farewell to English," in which he bid that "perfect language to sell pigs in" adieu and vowed to write thereafter only in the "language of my people." Ironically, the poems in this fine retrospective appear only in that pig-selling language, reflecting the fact that Hartnett crept back to it in his later work. Even in English, his work is dense with the sensuality and passion of Irish, and the natural and human worlds so close to one another that what might otherwise be metaphor seems sheer factual statement. Hartnett's gift lies in the way he plays with themes and images far removed from an antiquated Irishness, so that in his work Greek gods and cigarettes, garlic and Sibelius, New York taxis and origami find their places beside country paths and dancing at crossroads. Hartnett was a poet of the world and a twentieth-century Irishman; he never forgot either identity. Patricia Monaghan
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Edition details

• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Publication date: 1960
• ISBN 10: 1852352957
• ISBN 13: 9781852352950
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 255
• Editor: Fallon Peter