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.
civil large life literary moore occupies reveal street unusual usual
I want to reveal in a simple way the usual - and unusual - life of the city; the corporation workman, the busmen, policemen, the civil servants, the theatres, Moore Street and also, what occupies so large a place in Dublin's life, the literary and artistic.
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.
cities life
Life in cities is not a spring but a river, or rather, a water main. It progresses like a novel, artificially.
eats man till
Publicity's a cancer. It eats out a man - till there's nothing but a shell left.
brought food gaelic longer native position
The position is: the Gaelic language is no longer the native language; it is dead, yet food is being brought to the graveyard.
dead matter
There is nothing as dead and as damned as an important thing. The things that really matter are casual, insignificant little things.