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Tag Archives: innocence

“Innocence” by Patrick Kavanaugh

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

≈ Comments Off on “Innocence” by Patrick Kavanaugh

Tags

Aging, Dublin, Experience, innocence, Ireland, Irish Poetry, Monaghan, Mortality, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, Patrick Kavanaugh, Poem, poetry, Regret, Selected Poems, William Butler Yeats

Patrick Kavanaugh

They laughed at one I loved —
The triangular hill that hung
Under the Big Forth. They said
That I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges
Of the little farm and did not know the world.
But I knew that love’s doorway to life
Is the same doorway everywhere.

Ashamed of what I loved
I flung her from me and called her a ditch
Although she was smiling at me with violets.

But now I am back in her briary arms
The dew of an Indian Summer morning lies
On bleached potato-stalks—
What age am I?

I do not know what age I am,
I am no mortal age;
I know nothing of women,
Nothing of cities,
I cannot die
Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges.

__________

“Innocence” by Patrick Kavanagh, which you’ll find in his Selected Poems.

If you ever hoof it to the village of Inniskeen in County Monaghan, Ireland, you’ll find Patrick Kavanagh’s grave among the pale wooden crosses in the village cemetery. According to pilgrims who’ve made the trek, some of the locals will still reminisce about the native son (Kavanagh died in Dublin in 1967). As one resident told a recent visitor: “I knew Paddy. His mother couldn’t read and his father was a cobbler. Paddy was not a good farmer… he paid no heed to his fields.”

Not surprisingly. His mind was on — or perhaps already in — the city. Like many poets of the day, from Yeats to Wilde to Goldsmith, Kavanagh migrated to Dublin, walking the fifty-mile journey for the first time in 1931, at the age of twenty-seven. He would be internationally known within the decade, largely due to his poems about common life “On Raglan Road” and “The Great Hunger”.

It’s clear he scorned the grubby, provincial life of his boyhood, with its emotional and material deprivation, its spiritual nullity. In his poem “Stony Grey Soil”, he levels a series of accusations against the stubborn soil of Monaghan: “the laugh from my love you thieved”, “you fed me on swinish food”, “you flung a ditch on my vision”. (There’s that “ditch” accusation he’s looking to rescind in “Innocence”.)

I’ll let Christian Wiman explain the rest of the poem and its relation to spiritual innocence, in his recent lecture “When You Consider the Radiance: Poetry for Preachers and Prophets”. It’s where I first heard of the poem, and I recommend watching the whole thing. Wiman’s reading of “Innocence” is set to start below.

Read on:

  • “On a Return from Egypt” by Keith Douglas
  • What Kipling’s “Recessional” can teach us about American foreign policy
  • “Instead of an Epilogue” by Kingsley Amis

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The World Is Getting Less Innocent

26 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Interview, Literature

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

consumerism, excess, Experience, Germaine Greer, innocence, Martin Amis, Money, Money: A Suicide Note, the world, wealth

Martin Amis

“I, in common with many writers, feel that there’s a great convulsion of stupidity happening in the world. Mostly to do with television. People know a little about a lot, and put very little effort into accumulating knowledge and culture, and when they do, it’s almost like a sort of consumerism of culture…

But with regard to feeling disgust, I think every writer — even the blackest writer — actually loves it all. I suppose it is temperamental, but I don’t sit around feeling disgusted. I feel enthused.

Many of us think the world has reached its nadir, its low point. But in fact this era will be lamented, just like the last. That’s the paradox.

What you can say about the world is that, while it may not be getting any better, it’s getting infinitely less innocent all the time. It’s like, it has been to so many parties, been on so many dates, had so many fights, got its handbag stolen so many times. So the accumulation is what makes the world seem at its worst, always. Because it’s never been through as much as it’s been through today, the earth.”

__________

From an interview with Martin Amis in 1984, discussing his acclaimed novel about consumerism and excess, Money: A Suicide Note.

I’m glad to report that you, the consistent reader of this blog, most likely do not fall into that wide category of people who put minimal energy into absorbing culture and knowledge.

Watch the short discussion with Amis below:

Read previously posted excerpts from Money here:

Martin Amis

There’s Only One Way to Get Good at Fighting

New York

In L.A.

Thailand Plane

That Head-on-Heart Stuff

Young Martin Amis

Can You Remember Where You Left Those Keys?

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