Soundings is back!

Great to see on the news tonight that the poetry book that many sweated over for the Leaving is back in print! Soundings is re-published and the demand is phenomenal. As a lover of English and poetry I loved it - but still refuse to learn things by heart. If you love anything you'll remember it, thinks I! Great to hear some of the verses on the News tonight. Great Irish writers with Kavanagh's voice reciting his own work. Will be buying first thing in the morning and reading to the leanaí til Christmas!

For MMM ........ pure class!

Canal Bank Walk by Patrick Kavanagh

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.

Great stuff. I'm definitely going to get a copy cause I reckon when it isn't being rammed down your throat it would be a very enjoyable read.

Never heard of it until tonight's news. Unlikely to hold a place of honour on my bookshelf though.
How lucky ye' were to have this wonderful manuscript. I regret I never had the opportunity to utilise it.
Bit like the Green Catechism from my day I suppose........

Trust me Mr B - it is full of gold. You could pick it up and open a random page and read away. Here's another beaut from it and the sentiment in it and the reasons Yeats wrote it are as apt today as they were 97 years ago. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose .......

September 1913
What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry `Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.

Goldsmith must have known Patrique

"And still they gazed and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew."

OMAR wrote:Goldsmith must have known Patrique
"And still they gazed and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew."

Jayo Cluxton wrote:Great to see on the news tonight that the poetry book that many sweated over for the Leaving is back in print! Soundings is re-published and the demand is phenomenal. As a lover of English and poetry I loved it - but still refuse to learn things by heart. If you love anything you'll remember it, thinks I! Great to hear some of the verses on the News tonight. Great Irish writers with Kavanagh's voice reciting his own work. Will be buying first thing in the morning and reading to the leanaí til Christmas!

Great news Jayo and better still 'Peig' is back in print also.

Real Kerry Fan wrote:Great news Jayo and better still 'Peig' is back in print also.

God no RKF! Do we really need to hear about rustic life as Gaeilge from an old codger in the West of Ireland putting on the poor mouth and the mo bhróns and ochóns. Sure haven't we Boxty here for that ... and as Béarla too ....

What about Caislean óir
Cearrbhach Beití and Semí Phádraig Dubh and the minxish Babaí Mhartín

Tá sé fuar Seimí

Ah when I finally got to Ventry I had to go in to Paidí's for a stiff cure after having that Peig one foisted on me for years.

Bump for Moss ...

OMAR wrote:Goldsmith must have known Patrique

"And still they gazed and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew."

Brilliant , quite possibly the most cultured and witty put down ever seen on GT

Stony Great Soil, osome of the greatest few words ever thrown together in any time, language or otherwise by anyone. Here's to Paddy Kavanagh, one of the truest unsung hero's this land has ever seen

One of the main reasons I bumped it Moss. GT gold no doubt!