Poetry In Robert Heaney's The Course Of Irish Poetry

Robert Farren in his The Course of Irish verse in English assumed an Irish poetry so wholly defined in terms of a nationalist-catholic rural Irishness that it could be claimed with no sense of the circularity of the argument, that Irish poetry on the whole certainly, in its better parts, is decidedly Irish. (Farren 167) Irish poetry is written in two languages Irish and English. Poetry in Irish was written since the sixth century while the poems in the English language from Ireland appeared during the fourteenth century but English language poetry with Irish themes appeared in the nineteenth century and this form of poetry was prevalent during the Literary Revival at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.

(119-120) As Richard Murphy says Heaney’s poetry is “a seriously attempt to purge the land of terrible blood cult” (Murphy 39). He uses myth, politics and history in his poetry. Heaney through his poetry tries to show the continuations of history as a bond for the future generation. Heaney wrote about "The Troubles" with the historical context and the people who died in it. He published "Requiem for the Croppies” on the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, a poem that commemorates the Irish rebels of 1798. He commented “to read ‘Requiem for the Croppies’ wasn’t' to say the IRA or anything, it was silence breaking rather than rabble rousing” (48). He objected in 1982 against the inclusion of his poems in the Anthology of British Poetry. He lived in the republic of Ireland since 1972 and claimed that British nationality be advised my passport’s green. "No glass of ours was ever raised to toast the green" (48).

Paul Muldoon Paul Muldoon is the successor of Seamus Heaney. He is considered to be a Northern Ireland poet but now a citizen of America. His poetry expresses the Irish tradition but he is influenced by urbanization and

His poem “Dancers at the Moy” has a war setting of the Athenians but it presents the imagery of the Irish war of independence. In the poem the river Moy represents the historical fluidity of Ireland. He has tried to show as the river flows it carries memories of war and suffering in it. The poem begins with the description of the war field and ends near the river bed with people gathered near the river bank to see the skeletons of the horses that were buried during the war. The poem deals with the Irish struggle for independence on one hand and on the other it demonstrates that the declaration of war and peace are like games for the powerful nations. The poem “Good Friday, 1971 Driving Westward” is composed on the landscape of the Northern Ireland as a country with coastal areas and mountains. In this poem the poet is on a tour of his country before he leaves his country forever. In the last lines of the poem he describes the condition of the present generation of the Northern Ireland under the British rule. He says:

Children were warned that it was rude to