The report on Patrick Kavanagh is fairly detailed, except the portrayal of his years in Dublin are slim to none. It is true that the majority of Kavanagh's poetry is set in rural Ireland, but he did a great deal of writing about Dublin. He actually wrote about Dublin in his own direct and ruralistic way, which was quite popular with the city-dwellers. "That version of Ireland proved far more attractive to poetry-readers among the New Dubliners than had Kavanagh's savage indictment of rural torpor in The Great Hunger" (Foster 271). He "would convert Baggot Street and its nearby canals into 'my Pembrokshire', rediscovering in inner Dublin the pastoral landscapes he had abandoned in his youth" (Foster 271).
Another fact that I found interesting was that "for such bluntness [ in The Great Hunger], the poet was visited by the Irish police and the poem itself seized. Kavanagh was intent on portraying life to the point of actually being quite depressing. He showed the rural conditions as being sometimes extremely brutal. He even rejects "Yeats's beloved image of soil. 'Clay is the word', insists Kavanagh, 'and clay is the flesh'" (Foster 272). Of course, one could say that life is terribly cruel and depressing and if this is the case, Kavanagh can paint a very glum picture of Ireland and life. Kavanagh uses very pungent words, but this is very effective and makes the reader think about what life is really about.
However, all in all, this paper helped me with the man Patrick Kavanagh. His poetry speaks for itself and the limit of your scope on the life of Patrick Kavanagh was inciteful and well done. You tend to shy away from the negative, whereas the whole picture needs to be taken into account and expressed when trying to write on such an author. The paper does, however, give a nice representation of the wonderful farmer-poet who set out into the big world to give a voice to the common man. I wouldn't say, though, that he painted the "most accurate picture of Ireland," because much of Ireland couldn't provide any type of backdrop for his poetry.
Works Cited
Foster, R.F. ed. The Oxford History of Ireland. Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1989.