Thomas Kinsella: The Peppercanister Poems: The Peppercanister Poems - Softcover

Tubridy, Derval

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1900621533 ISBN 13: 9781900621533

Publisher: Univ College Dubli, 2019

Synopsis

Traces the history of the Peppercanister Press and illuminates the evolving development of Kinsella's ambitious poetic project. The poems are discussed chronologically and the clear interpretations are accompanied by drawings and reproductions of covers from the original publications.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Kinsella has spent several decades among Ireland's most difficult, strangest and most critically respected poets. The Dublin-based poet (no relation to Australia's John Kinsella) gained modest fame with elegant, if conventional, formal poems in the '50s and '60s; during the same years he translated many classic poems in the Irish language. After the "Bloody Sunday" killings of 1972, Kinsella responded with Butcher's Dozen, whose rough, angry couplets appeared as a pamphlet from Peppercanister Press, which Kinsella set up (with some help) himself. The death of an Irish composer prompted another poem and pamphlet; these in turn laid the foundation for the short, often bitter sequences each a brief volume from Peppercanister which have become Kinsella's life work. (The Collected Poems appeared from Oxford in 1996.) Some consider public events; others follow Kinsella on meditative walks through the Irish capital. Many pursue evasive memories or enunciate moral dicta "Thou shalt not entertain,/ charm or impress," one new short poem begins. Much of Citizen of the World (number 22 in the series) reimagines the 18th-century writer Oliver Goldsmith; its concluding sequence evokes instead dangerous women, from mermaids to Mary "The Virgin is rising/ to Her pale height,/ feeding on our needs." Littlebody (number 23) becomes more contemporary and personal in one poem, Kinsella refuses the "ghostly gold" of a demonic leprechaun; "I have all I need for the while I have left// without taking unnecessary risks." (July) Forecast: Kinsella will certainly gain critical attention in America sooner or later, whether or not these volumes prompt it. His acerbic, allusive verse may never command a broad following; it may, however, appeal to sophisticated fans of Geoffrey Hill or Peter Reading, both of whom Kinsella's cadences can recall. Derval Tubridy's hefty monograph Thomas Kinsella: The Peppercanister Poems offers readers everything they could want to know about Kinsella, from his complex publishing history to his intellectual obsessions: its chapters divide the Peppercanister series volume by volume, interpreting almost every poem and making careful observations throughout. (Univ. College Dublin [Dufour, dist.] $69.95 274p ISBN 1-900621-52-5; $29.95 paper ISBN -53-3.
- $69.95 274p ISBN 1-900621-52-5; $29.95 paper ISBN -53-3)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Ms Tubridy's book is a solid piece of academic research which will doubtless be of enormous value to students of Kinsella's work." Michael Smith Irish Times Jan 2001 "Kinsella expects the reader to engage as fully as he or she can with his work. Derval Tubridy is that kind of reader ... For anyone unsure about how to read Kinsella's poetry her book is enormously valuable." Maurice Harmon Irish University Review 31 (1) 2001 "[Derval Tubridy] is wholly appreciative of Kinsella's experiment and responds to it with fluent explicative prose, helpfully documenting the contexts from which the poems arose, and examining earlier drafts and notes to which the poet has allowed her access." Irish Studies Review 9 (2) 2001 "Tubridy's lucid book will work a treat for student and general reader alike because it gives a trusty guide to the Kinsella districts, both inner and outer." Gerald Dawe Irish Times April 2001 "[Kinsella's work] comes under the sober scrutiny of Derval Tubridy in a study without hyperbole or any grandiose characterisation of her subject." Books Ireland Summer 2001 "From the beginning of this book the control which the critic exercises over her material is clear... One of the great benefits of the variety of detail which Tubridy brings to bear on her subject is that no single influence is seen to provide a key to Kinsella's work, a reductive tendency that has beset less thoughtful critics... the affinity between critic and poet ensures a valuable addition to the study of Kinsella's work." Irish Literary Supplement Spring 2002 "the first critical analysis to use fully the Emory archive and which, as a result, pieces together a more complete and thorough understanding of Kinsella's later poetry than any of its predecessors." Nua: Studies in Contemporary Irish Writing Oct 2003

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ College Dubli
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1900621533
• ISBN 13: 9781900621533
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288