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Selected Poems
Published in order of first publication as far as possible, this selection ranges from initial offerings such as "Tinker's Wife" and "Inniskeen July Evening" to his tragic masterpiece "The Great Hunger" (1942) and his celebratory later verse, "To Hell with Common Sense" and "Come Dance with Kitty Stobling", which show his increasing comic verve and detachment. The first comprehensive selection of Kavanagh's poetry to be published, this volume offers a timely reassessment of a poet unfairly neglected outside Ireland.
256 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2001
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230 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Kavanagh
44 books73 followersPatrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems "On Raglan Road" and "The Great Hunger". He is known for accounts of Irish life through reference to the everyday and commonplace.
When the Irish Times compiled a list of favourite Irish poems in 2000, ten of his poems were in the top fifty, and Kavanagh was rated the second favourite poet behind WB Yeats. The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award is presented each year for an unpublished collection of poems. The annual Patrick Kavanagh Weekend takes place on the last weekend in September in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland. The Patrick Kavanagh Centre, an interpretative centre set up to commemorate the poet, is located in Inniskeen. [wikipedia]
When the Irish Times compiled a list of favourite Irish poems in 2000, ten of his poems were in the top fifty, and Kavanagh was rated the second favourite poet behind WB Yeats. The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award is presented each year for an unpublished collection of poems. The annual Patrick Kavanagh Weekend takes place on the last weekend in September in Inniskeen, County Monaghan, Ireland. The Patrick Kavanagh Centre, an interpretative centre set up to commemorate the poet, is located in Inniskeen. [wikipedia]
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 2, 2025
This is a new selected poems collection published by Wake Forest University Press. Kavanagh, Heaney and Yeats are usually considered the top three Irish poets. Both Heaney and Kavanagh were from rural backgrounds in Ulster. Kavanagh was born and grew up in a rural area of County Monaghan, a northern county in the province of Ulster. It is one of the three Ulster counties that remained in the Republic of Ireland after partition. Heaney was born and grew up in County Derry.
The poems included in this volume were selected by Paul Muldoon, another greatt Northern Irish poet. His introduction to the volume is brilliant, and enhances reading the collection.
The poems included in this volume were selected by Paul Muldoon, another greatt Northern Irish poet. His introduction to the volume is brilliant, and enhances reading the collection.
August 22, 2021
I studied Kavanagh in school. We had to study five poets in depth, of which we’d be given two to choose from in the final exam. The canny thing to do was pick three and do them well, so I did Derek Mahon, my class focused on PK, and Mahon came up in the exam. I don’t know if that’s why I carried a ‘meh’ attitude to Kavanagh till now, but this collection rightly turned it on its head. This is exactly my kind of poetry, because it’s both beautiful and functional. Kavanagh uses his medium to deliver opinions on religion and rural Ireland with a specificity that is greatly to his credit. I enjoyed myself very much, although, I’ll admit, I preferred the shorter poems to the epic ‘Great Hunger’ and ‘Lough Derg’.
Author’s note:
“A true poet is selfish and implacable. A poet merely states the positiosn and does not care whether his words change anything or not.”
Address to an Old Wooden Gate:
“Or watch the fairy-columned turf-smoke rise
From white-washed cottage chimneys heaven-wise.”
After May:
“May came, and every shabby phoenix flapped
A coloured rag in lieu of shining wings;”
Tinker’s Wife:
“Her face had streaks of care
Like wires across it,”
The Hired Boy:
“And how to be satisfied with the little
The destiny masters give
To the beasts of the tillage country –
To be damned and yet to live.”
To the Man After the Harrow:
“The seed like stars agains the black
Eternity of April clay.”
“For you are driving your horses through
The mist where Genesis begins.”
The Great Hunger:
“God is in the bits and pieces of Everyday –
A kiss here and a laugh again, and sometimes tears,
A pearl necklace around the neck of poverty.”
“Who bent the coin of my destiny
That it stuck in the slot?”
Lough Derg:
“They come to Lough Derg to fast and pray and beg
With all the bitterness of nonentities, and the envy
Of the inarticulate when dealing with an artist.
Their hands pushed closed the doors that God holds
open.
Love-sunlit is an enchanter in June’s hours
And flowers and light. These to shopkeepers and small
lawyers
Are heresies up beauty’s sleeve.”
“This was the banal
Beggary that God heard. Was he bored
As men are with the poor? Christ Lord
Hears in the voices of the meanly poor
Homeric utterances, poetry sweeping through.”
Advent:
“We have tested and tasted too much, lover –
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in this Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.”
Memory of Brother Michael:
“Culture is always something that was,
Something pedants can measure,
Skull of bard, thigh of chief,
Depth of dried-up river,
Shall we be thus for ever?
Shall we be thus for ever?”
On Raglan Road:
“O I loved too much and by such by such is happiness
thrown away.”
Epic:
“Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.”
Having Confessed:
“We must not touch the immortal material
We must not daydream tomorrow’s judgement –
God must be allowed to surprise us.
We have sinned, sinned like Lucifer
By this anticipation. Let us lie down again
Deep in anonymous humility and God
May find us worthy material for His hand.”
Canal Bank Walk:
“For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress
woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot
be proven.”
Winter:
“And looking out my window I saw that Winter had
landed
Complete with the grey cloak and the bare tree sonnet.”
Thank You, Thank You:
“For what it teaches us is just this
We are not alone in our loneliness,
Others have been here and known
Griefs we thought our special own
Problems that we could not solve
Lovers that we could not have
Pleasures that we missed by inches.”
An Insult:
“To which there is no answer but to pray
For guidance through the parks of everyday,
To be silent till the soul itself forgives,
To learn again there is no golden rule
For keeping out of suffering – if one lives.”
Favourites: Address to an Old Wooden Gate; Ploughman; After May; Inniskeen Road: July Evening; Shancoduff; Advent; Pegasus; Memory of Brother Michael; On Raglan Road; Irish Poets Open Your Eyes; Epic; Wet Evening in April; Is; Canal Bank Walk; Miss Universe.
Author’s note:
“A true poet is selfish and implacable. A poet merely states the positiosn and does not care whether his words change anything or not.”
Address to an Old Wooden Gate:
“Or watch the fairy-columned turf-smoke rise
From white-washed cottage chimneys heaven-wise.”
After May:
“May came, and every shabby phoenix flapped
A coloured rag in lieu of shining wings;”
Tinker’s Wife:
“Her face had streaks of care
Like wires across it,”
The Hired Boy:
“And how to be satisfied with the little
The destiny masters give
To the beasts of the tillage country –
To be damned and yet to live.”
To the Man After the Harrow:
“The seed like stars agains the black
Eternity of April clay.”
“For you are driving your horses through
The mist where Genesis begins.”
The Great Hunger:
“God is in the bits and pieces of Everyday –
A kiss here and a laugh again, and sometimes tears,
A pearl necklace around the neck of poverty.”
“Who bent the coin of my destiny
That it stuck in the slot?”
Lough Derg:
“They come to Lough Derg to fast and pray and beg
With all the bitterness of nonentities, and the envy
Of the inarticulate when dealing with an artist.
Their hands pushed closed the doors that God holds
open.
Love-sunlit is an enchanter in June’s hours
And flowers and light. These to shopkeepers and small
lawyers
Are heresies up beauty’s sleeve.”
“This was the banal
Beggary that God heard. Was he bored
As men are with the poor? Christ Lord
Hears in the voices of the meanly poor
Homeric utterances, poetry sweeping through.”
Advent:
“We have tested and tasted too much, lover –
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in this Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.”
Memory of Brother Michael:
“Culture is always something that was,
Something pedants can measure,
Skull of bard, thigh of chief,
Depth of dried-up river,
Shall we be thus for ever?
Shall we be thus for ever?”
On Raglan Road:
“O I loved too much and by such by such is happiness
thrown away.”
Epic:
“Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.”
Having Confessed:
“We must not touch the immortal material
We must not daydream tomorrow’s judgement –
God must be allowed to surprise us.
We have sinned, sinned like Lucifer
By this anticipation. Let us lie down again
Deep in anonymous humility and God
May find us worthy material for His hand.”
Canal Bank Walk:
“For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress
woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot
be proven.”
Winter:
“And looking out my window I saw that Winter had
landed
Complete with the grey cloak and the bare tree sonnet.”
Thank You, Thank You:
“For what it teaches us is just this
We are not alone in our loneliness,
Others have been here and known
Griefs we thought our special own
Problems that we could not solve
Lovers that we could not have
Pleasures that we missed by inches.”
An Insult:
“To which there is no answer but to pray
For guidance through the parks of everyday,
To be silent till the soul itself forgives,
To learn again there is no golden rule
For keeping out of suffering – if one lives.”
Favourites: Address to an Old Wooden Gate; Ploughman; After May; Inniskeen Road: July Evening; Shancoduff; Advent; Pegasus; Memory of Brother Michael; On Raglan Road; Irish Poets Open Your Eyes; Epic; Wet Evening in April; Is; Canal Bank Walk; Miss Universe.
March 1, 2025
He will hardly remember that life happened to him —
Something was brighter a moment. Somebody sang in the distance.
A procession passed down a mesmerized street.
He remembers names like Easter and Christmas
By the colour his fields were.
Something was brighter a moment. Somebody sang in the distance.
A procession passed down a mesmerized street.
He remembers names like Easter and Christmas
By the colour his fields were.
Read
February 3, 2025It’s odd, finding a selection of poetry by an obscure twentieth-century Irish poet in Baku, Azerbaijan. I knew I made a good choice flipping around the pages while walking down the street to my Airbnb that night.
Frankly, as far as Irish poets go, I don’t like Yeats, and so I am wont to find something more agreeable in Kavanagh. Moving from a tactile earthiness to an ethereal abstract, he seemingly bursts at the seems with a spontaneity that is certainly not spontaneous but meticulously crafted and controlled. I’ll leave you with some lines:
“Be ordinary,
Be saving up to marry.
Kiss her in the alleyway,
Part—‘Same time, same place’ and go.”
Frankly, as far as Irish poets go, I don’t like Yeats, and so I am wont to find something more agreeable in Kavanagh. Moving from a tactile earthiness to an ethereal abstract, he seemingly bursts at the seems with a spontaneity that is certainly not spontaneous but meticulously crafted and controlled. I’ll leave you with some lines:
“Be ordinary,
Be saving up to marry.
Kiss her in the alleyway,
Part—‘Same time, same place’ and go.”
March 9, 2023
"Gods make their own importance."
July 25, 2023
might just as well key this bit of comment i wrote after finishing this one.
kavanagh is so underrated, his poems do not satisfy themselves for the less, rather, he manages to give a holistic yet touching view on the irish common people. they were about the unfulfilled dreams of life, and the general depression in those periods. there's a lot of references to the old irish legends, yeats and james joyce, for which i whole-heartedly appreciate. his sarcasm of the very unsettling reality is such a fine extra touch to fuel his poetry with more perspectives. a lot of those poems are great, in the sense that they don't over-flatter themselves, nor they become too placid by the sight of dramatic language, and the tendency to make themselves grand with the flowery history of the old greek, roman epics. they are down-to-earth, but never settle for the unimaginative. the great hunger is a multi-parted poem, for which, out of all would be the most smooth runs of long poems that i had ever read. the storyline is simple, about the life of patrick maguire. yet, it goes beyond the mere versing of plots as books like eugene onegin (not that they don't have any merits), they are verses that bring out the very thought of the poet:
"god's truth is life-even the grotesque shapes of its foulest fire"
"in a grap there's a bush weighted with boulders like morality,
the fools of life bleed if they climb over"
"who bent the coin of my destiny
that it stuck in the slot?"
his modern use of language are lyric-like, to that of a well-written pop or rock song. and just in one poem, the style of writing vareis, the verses change as they move to the next section. it's such a joy to read.
kavanagh is so underrated, his poems do not satisfy themselves for the less, rather, he manages to give a holistic yet touching view on the irish common people. they were about the unfulfilled dreams of life, and the general depression in those periods. there's a lot of references to the old irish legends, yeats and james joyce, for which i whole-heartedly appreciate. his sarcasm of the very unsettling reality is such a fine extra touch to fuel his poetry with more perspectives. a lot of those poems are great, in the sense that they don't over-flatter themselves, nor they become too placid by the sight of dramatic language, and the tendency to make themselves grand with the flowery history of the old greek, roman epics. they are down-to-earth, but never settle for the unimaginative. the great hunger is a multi-parted poem, for which, out of all would be the most smooth runs of long poems that i had ever read. the storyline is simple, about the life of patrick maguire. yet, it goes beyond the mere versing of plots as books like eugene onegin (not that they don't have any merits), they are verses that bring out the very thought of the poet:
"god's truth is life-even the grotesque shapes of its foulest fire"
"in a grap there's a bush weighted with boulders like morality,
the fools of life bleed if they climb over"
"who bent the coin of my destiny
that it stuck in the slot?"
his modern use of language are lyric-like, to that of a well-written pop or rock song. and just in one poem, the style of writing vareis, the verses change as they move to the next section. it's such a joy to read.
July 7, 2013
Should I confess that I picked this book because of the cover, knowing nothing about Patrick Kavanagh?.. Well, I did. And I'm glad I did. I always said judging book by the cover can occasionally be a good thing, especially if it's a Penguin one.
Kavanagh is not the kind of poet I usually enjoy reading, but his verse is strong and confident. I imagine this would read very differently for someone who is Irish, or maybe even for someone who grew up in the countryside - both topics are prominent in his poetry. I couldn't really connect to either of these, so a lot of the poems just felt like good-poetry-about-Ireland-and-countryside and left me relatively untouched.
And then there was this:
Oh dear. And this:
And this:
Overall, I enjoyed his earlier poems more, and some of the later ones. The middle was too deliberate and political to me.
Kavanagh is not the kind of poet I usually enjoy reading, but his verse is strong and confident. I imagine this would read very differently for someone who is Irish, or maybe even for someone who grew up in the countryside - both topics are prominent in his poetry. I couldn't really connect to either of these, so a lot of the poems just felt like good-poetry-about-Ireland-and-countryside and left me relatively untouched.
And then there was this:
It was the garden of the golden apples
And when the Carrick train went by we knew
That we could never die till something happened...
(The Long Garden)
Oh dear. And this:
He sat on the railway slope and watched the evening,
Too beautifully perfect to use...
(The Great Hunger)
And this:
There was a time when a mood recaptured was enough
Just to be able to hold momentarily November in the
woods
Or a street we made our own through being in
love.
(After Forty Years of Age)
Overall, I enjoyed his earlier poems more, and some of the later ones. The middle was too deliberate and political to me.
December 7, 2022
Canal Bank Walk
Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.
Leafy-with-love banks and the green waters of the canal
Pouring redemption for me, that I do
The will of God, wallow in the habitual, the banal,
Grow with nature again as before I grew.
The bright stick trapped, the breeze adding a third
Party to the couple kissing on an old seat,
And a bird gathering materials for the nest for the Word
Eloquently new and abandoned to its delirious beat.
O unworn world enrapture me, encapture me in a web
Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,
Feed the gaping need of my senses, give me ad lib
To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech
For this soul needs to be honoured with a new dress woven
From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven.
February 23, 2023
I read this collection slowly over several weeks, and it is a good, chronological overview of his poetic writing career. You can easily see how other poets have been influenced and inspired by his rural poems, which aren't all idyllic, daffodil swaying scenes, but have got people, and sadness, and reality living in them.
August 7, 2023
“a poet? then by heavens he must be poor..”
i hear and is my heart not badly shaken?”
“and there’s the half-code talk of mysteries
and the wink-and-elbow language of delight”
kavanagh is easily the most underrated irish poet. i was pleasantly surprised to find that a man who died half a decade before my birth wrote poetry that resonates with me so deeply
i hear and is my heart not badly shaken?”
“and there’s the half-code talk of mysteries
and the wink-and-elbow language of delight”
kavanagh is easily the most underrated irish poet. i was pleasantly surprised to find that a man who died half a decade before my birth wrote poetry that resonates with me so deeply
January 18, 2016
A beautiful collection of wonderful Irish poet that I was introduced by a piece on NPR. This collection provides a great orienting introduction to the poems and the poet's evolution; as well as very useful notes for each poem to place them in his overall work.
October 21, 2019
Quite excellent selection from the "other" Irish poet.
March 25, 2016
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13922004
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13922004
December 13, 2018
Accessible and enjoyable.
January 6, 2023
Patrick Kavanagh’s one of the best in the biz.
September 26, 2023
The Great Hunger and Canal Bank Walk offer up my favourite.
Read
November 29, 2024From the introduction:
Courage, by which he meant dissent from accepted norms, was perhaps the literary and personal quality he most admired.
Courage, by which he meant dissent from accepted norms, was perhaps the literary and personal quality he most admired.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews