Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanaghwas an Irish poet and novelist. His best-known works include the novel Tarry Flynn, and the poems "On Raglan Road" and "The Great Hunger". He is known for his accounts of Irish life through reference to the everyday and commonplace...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 October 1904
CountryIreland
exciting five interested issues joyce large man public
The exciting quality about Joyce is that when you read him, you are not told of the large public issues that were agitating the minds of politicians and journalists on those days. Joyce is interested in the mind of a man who has put five shillings on a horse.
bad folk private simple
The keynote of simple folk is bad manners, familiarity. They intrude on one's private soul.
civil large life literary moore occupies reveal street unusual usual
I want to reveal in a simple way the usual - and unusual - life of the city; the corporation workman, the busmen, policemen, the civil servants, the theatres, Moore Street and also, what occupies so large a place in Dublin's life, the literary and artistic.
depth experience field fields four fully gap junction land man narrow poetic rock small smooth stream view woody
To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime's experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience.
dances life might poet
A poet is never one of the people. He is detached, remote, and the life of small-time dances and talk about football would not be for him. He might take part but could not belong.
reality curiosity enthusiasm
It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities - life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked.
next kitties volume
Publication there [in Nimbus] was to prove a turning point… The publication of his next volume of verse, Come Dance with Kitty Stobling, was to be directly linked to the mini-collection in Nimbus, and his Collected Poems (1964)
newspapers
What appears in newspapers is often new but seldom true.
men good-man originality
A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.
men expression mediocrity
Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.
opinion miserable enjoy
It often occurs to me that we love most what makes us miserable. In my opinion the damned are damned because they enjoy being damned.
names mediocrity malice
Malice is only another name for mediocrity.
rejection should left
Macmillan's rejection had left him very downcast... Patrick Swift was invited to peruse the contents and decided that the poems should be published.
verses
I dabbled in verse and it became my life