Leading the Circus

During a period of political instability and change, Ireland’s literary landscape in the 1930’s adapted to the new climate of a free state and the disillusioned national identity. Poet’s such as Kavanagh and Clarke were on the tail of Yeats’s career, struggling to escape the narrow political ideas of the time. Clarke fails in this endeavor because he is still adhering to the traditional limits of the time, incorporating Ireland’s past and methods of Gaelic poetry “to screen the deeper need that must not be avowed”, as criticized by Samuel Beckett (Beckett 73). On the other hand, Kavanagh’s embrace of modernism challenged the conventional Irish verse that Clarke promoted. By rooting his poetry in the vernacular and awareness of place, as seen in “Canal Bank Walk,” he complicates the Irish beloved “rural self-image” (Gillis 62). “The Straying Student” and “Canal Bank Walk” are comparable due to their use of place and identity, but an analysis of their respective prose reveals that Clarke’s work is incongruent with his radical theme, while Kavanagh’s parochial perspective is supported by simple diction and form that reinforces his expression of love for the rural. 

Both Kavanagh and Clarke reference place, either foreign lands or the parochial, to emphasize larger themes of Irish identity and creation in their poetry. In “The Straying Student” Clarke begins the student’s journey in Inishmore, a local parish, where he is first drawn “to the woman coming from the shore” (4) and follows her into Stanza two: “Long had she lived in Rome when Popes were bad, /The wealth of every age she makes her own,” (7-8). By using a woman figure as the embodiment of knowledge and religious autonomy, Clarke juxtaposes the seduction of foreign lands to the parochialism of homogenous Ireland. The escape of parochialism corresponds to intellectual and sexual freedom, as the poem is fused with sexual imagery: “I learned the prouder counsel of her throat, / My mind was growing bold as light in Greece” (13-14). The contrast between the worldly and the provincial contemplates a larger theme: the religious domination over freedom of thought. The association of sexual and intellectual liberation according to place is a flagrant criticism on the authority of the Church, an integral part of Irish identity. Although appearing progressive, Clarke’s theme of sexual and intellectual liberation is hindered by his traditional form and focus on Ireland’s past. A readily used example would be his use of assonance, a Gaelic technique seen in the end of his lines: ‘Inishmore’, ‘shore’, and ‘doorway’. He exercises this outdated form to counteract the loss of Irish identity in an increasingly English and contemporary mode of art. In his essay “Irish poetry To-day” he states “Irish poetry has lost the ready ear and the comforts of recognition. But we must go on. We must be true to our own minds” (Clarke). This can be seen as a defense for the antiquarian aesthetic that modernists such as Samuel Beckett were critiquing him for. Later in the poem when the woman’s “eyes grow bright with mockery” and she “deceive[s]” him, the student is subject again to the Church’s oppression; his distress is evident: “Awake or in my sleep, I have no peace now” (25). The affair with foreign, modern thought is unreliable and fleeting, leaving the narrator in a physiological and physical place of distress: “in this land, where every woman’s son/ Must carry his own coffin and believe, / In dread, all that the clergy teach the young” (28-30). By returning to the oppression of the church in the end of the poem, Clarke himself descends into the past. His stubbornness in maintaining a traditional form and antiquated style roots him in a past ideology that he is trying to surpass in his poem. While the narrator of the poem is deserted by his worldly influence, disillusioned returning to the parochial, and trapped in the dominating belief system he wished to escape, the poem itself becomes a microcosm of Clarke’s failed ambition for reformist thought while ingrained in and molded by Ireland’s traditional identity. 

Similar to Clarke, place is central to the religious and artistic themes Kavanagh represents in “Canal Bank Walk.” In this poem, “The Straying Student” is Kavanagh himself: absorbing the beauty in his ordinary environment. The shift in his artistic perspective after his hospital visit in 1955, where he emerges with a fresh appreciation for the pastoral, is clearly defined by this confessional, love sonnet (Allison 54). To escape the inauthenticity of Ireland’s cherished illusion of pastoral life, Kavanagh separates the idea of the provincial from the parochial: “the provincial has no mind of its own; he does not trust what his eyes see until he has heard what the metropolis – toward which his eyes are turned – has to say on the subject” (Kavanagh). In his own definition, “Canal Bank Walk” can be defined as a parochial poem; Kavanagh’s tactile appreciation for the landscape undermines the political and cultural drama that Clarke meditates on. With beginning the poem “leafy-with-love banks” he establishes the type of sonnet he wishes to convey, and the love for the nature endures throughout (1). Kavanagh’s banally descriptive setting by the canal emphasizes his love for the ordinary and piety: “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” (1-4). In opposition to Clarke’s representation of religion as confining and anti-intellectual, Kavanagh expresses a connectedness with God through the healing and positive attributes in nature. In promoting an ordinary, natural perspective for religious affirmation, and by using vernacular verse, he is consistent with an authentic representation of the parochial. 

Kavanagh’s simplistic, encompassing style matches his content; unlike Clarke, he does not contradict his theme, but animates the emotion behind his love. This love is what fuels his poetic inspiration- absorbing and naming the place acts as a muse to his poetry. 

O unworn world enrapture me, enrapture me in a web 

Of fabulous grass and eternal voices by a beech,

Feed the gaping need of my senses, give ad lib 

To pray unselfconsciously with overflowing speech… (9-12)

By evoking the “unworn world” he establishes the disconnect between urban life and the purity of the pastoral world (Allison 42). The “fabulous grass” and “eternal voices” distributes a divine quality to nature, the “God in the everyday”, that he attributes to fulfilling his senses (Gillis 70). This prayer-like request to the “unworn world” in line 9 acts as a volta, shifting from fact and observation to a submissive pleading. The knowledge and inspiration he derives from immersing himself in the parochial appears to renew his “soul” with “a new dress woven/ From green and blue things and arguments that cannot be proven” (13-14). In comparison with Clarke, who tackles religious and cultural dilemmas with an escape of the parochial into thought-liberating places of the world, nevertheless confined to an archaic poetic form and Ireland’s traditional ideologies, Kavanagh focuses on the present: beauty and love, the religious affirmations in the ordinary, and flee from political statements. In this, he represents the everyday, the common man in a tangible world of nature. 

Faced with the crises of National identity and cultural stagnation while the rest of the world seemingly embraced Modernist movements, Kavanagh and Clarke infuse conventional themes of religion, love, and place in their poetry to challenge the existing ideals. In light of Clarke’s support for maintaining Ireland’s national identity through the use of Gaelic form, his criticism of the intellectual and sexual boundaries of Irish culture are incongruous with the identity he is promoting through his writing. On the other hand, Kavanagh illuminates the ordinary through a unique, humble perspective that dismantles the pre-existing view of rural life. Both poets use a confessional style, using love and sexuality as a platform to express their ideologies of the state and present moment. As Clarke relates sexual and intellectual freedom, both oppressed by the Church, he fails to escape the conventional ideologies he criticizes by remaining traditional in form and promoting a monolithic Ireland. On the other hand, Kavanagh’s focus on the parochial displays a love found in the ordinary, reinforced with his personal, informal diction. He does not need to search outside of the parish in order to gain the intellectual and spiritual freedom Clarke associates outside of the State, but the rurality and pureness of nature may act as a form of knowledge and inspiration- a muse to his poetry. 

Works Cited

Allison, Jonathan ‘Patrick Kavanagh and Antipastoral’, in Matthew Campbell, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry (2003)

Beckett, Samuel, ‘Recent Irish Poetry’ (1934). 

Clarke, Austin, and Gregory A. Schirmer. ‘Irish Poetry To-day.’ Reviews and Essays of Austin Clarke. C. Smythe, (1995).

Gillis, Alan ‘Patrick Kavanagh and Austin Clarke: In a Metaphysical Land’ in Irish Poetry of the 1930s (2005). 

Kavanagh, Patrick “Parochialism and Provincialism, “A Poet’s Country, 237. 

Quinn, Antioniette, ‘Patrick Kavanagh: Poetry and Independence’ in Patrick Kavanagh: Selected poems (1996).