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
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.
bad folk private simple
The keynote of simple folk is bad manners, familiarity. They intrude on one's private soul.
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.
enemy women worst
Wine and women do not go with song. Alcohol is the worst enemy of the imagination.
certain country held man places whom
In the country places of Ireland, writing is held in certain awe: a writer was a dangerous man from whom they instinctively recoiled.
base compared general happiness irregular life lived men natural naturally none principle progress rises rock rural spring women
Natural life, lived naturally as it is lived in the countryside, has none of that progress which is the base of happiness. Men and women in rural communities can be compared to a spring that rises out of a rock and spreads in irregular ever-widening circles. But the general principle is static.
business destroyed green head libel
Ay - 'The Green Fool' business, the libel action over the head of it - did me a lot of damage. It destroyed the momentum.
life realise
How strange a thing like that happens to a man. He dabbles in something and does not realise that it is his life.
figures immoral letting principle selected themselves
Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything.
eats man till
Publicity's a cancer. It eats out a man - till there's nothing but a shell left.
dead matter
There is nothing as dead and as damned as an important thing. The things that really matter are casual, insignificant little things.
extent life protected somewhat work wrote
Yeats, protected to some extent by the Nationalistic movement, wrote out of a somewhat protected world, and so his work does not touch life deeply.
artistic cliche life pubs writers
Young writers should keep out of pubs and remember that the cliche way of the artistic life is a lie.
court follow forced gives happen high job judge love poetic poetry pubs truest
In its truest manifestation, where it gives judgments, poetry is super-luxury. It would be interesting to see what would happen to a High Court judge if he were forced to follow the true poetic formula, doing the job for love, being forced into pubs for relief.