Poets from various and different cultures and their poems tend to go through a sort of metamorphosis. Many of them start out with simple and flowery writing, while others begin their careers with cold, hard factual verse. Yet they all seem to eventually change their style and their focus. This is often the case with Irish poets who have a wide variety of national and cultural topics to write about as well as their own personal lives. In particular, Thomas Kinsella has been through these changes, socially and artistically. The changes in his life directly affected the different phases of his poetry. Thomas Kinsella, as a poet, went through two extremely different phases before settling into his third, most refined phase of poetry with his latest book, From Centre City.
Thomas Kinsella was born on 4 May 1928 into a working-class family in Dublin, Ireland. Kinsella took great pride in his family and the neighborhood in which he was born and raised. This overwhelming pride is reflected in many of his earlier, biographical poems. He was raised in a rural area, basically his permanent home, in the center of Dublin near the Guiness Brewery where his father worked. Many of the streets in his neighborhood and the area where his grandparents lived were incorporated into his poems and still are a common sight in his poetry. He began his education at a national school and then moved on to a local Christian school where he earned a scholarship to the
University College Dublin, where he enrolled in September 1946. It was here at UCD that Kinsella's life took an unexpected turn.
Thomas Kinsella had already completed a few terms of physics and chemistry in his attempt to major in general science when he was notified that he was qualified for a civil service job based on his public examinations. He accepted the job as a junior executive officer and started attending night classes. He obtained his diploma in public administration in 1949, around the same time he began writing poetry. During this time, he was "becoming 'committed' very fast to what had seemed at first just a challenging pastime."(Badin, 4) Also at this time, he began playing a vital role for the UCD literary quarterly, National Student. He wrote various short stories and poems for three years, among drawing cartoons and attempting to write in Irish. By 1951, Kinsella was beginning to realize that his key interests did not lay in his civil service job but much more in literature. This realization lead to a stream of changes in his life, from becoming a professional writer and translator to living abroad in the United States. One of the biggest accomplishments he is the most well-known for is his translation of The Tain. These milestones in his life could be seen in Kinsella's poetry.
The start of Thomas Kinsella's writing was a fluke, "a kind of wager with himself, to prove that he could do it," he admitted to himself. (Badin, 1) Yet, this wager soon became a way for him to learn the most from his experiences. Kinsella "has always been clear about what drives him: 'Here the passion is in the putting together,' he wrote in a poem from the early 1970's: 'I tinker with the things that dominate me/ as they describe their random/ persistent coherences.'" (Skloot, 30) The majority of Kinsella's poems are his experiences from his childhood and life. For this reason, a lot of poems include many
references to things from his childhood. In the poem, "The Bell", Kinsella mentions "Haddington Road" and "Inchicore"(Kinsella, 35) Haddington Road was a street he was familiar with and Inchicore was the first school that he had attended. These memories play directly into his poems in all three of his literary phases.
Kinsella's first phase of poetry, typically called the early phase which ended in 1968, was a testing ground for his style of writing. This "phase of apprenticeship," gave him a chance to write his poetry in many different forms about various subjects. (Badin, 11) Yet the only thing that gave the five volumes included in this early phase(Poems, Another September, Wormwood, Downstream, Nightwalker and Other Poems) any coherence was his respect for traditional forms and subjects. This first phase was a source of resentment for Kinsella himself. He thought that poems contained in these volumes were pointless and lacking substance. However, the reader can learn a lot about Kinsella's life, from the memories of his father in "His Father's Hands," to the courtship of his wife in "A Lady of Quality." Kinsella himself has said that his poetry during this time was "influenced by literature more than by fact."(Badin, 28) He tried to adapt the many styles of the various authors he read to his own life. By doing this, he stifled his own creativity and produced poetry that was almost shallow. This first phase began to frustrate him with the boundaries that he placed on himself. This early phase gave way to a more introspective and daring phase called the Jungian phase.
The Jungian phase, which lasted from 1972-1979, heralded in a "new phase where the irrational and the incoherent seem to dominate." (Badin, 11) As the name suggests, Kinsella began looking deeply into his own psyche following Jung's patterns of thinking, including many of the mythological cycles of Ireland. These poems seem formless, and the
structure that helped to make him well-known was lost. This put off a large number of readers who had enjoyed the restraint of his earlier poems. With this phase of his poetry, Kinsella began to take himself out of the public eye more and more. He made statements that his poetry was not meant to be entertainment or easy to understand. This withdrawal from society was directly reflected in his poetry by delving deeper into his own mind. The volumes that marked this phase of Kinsella's life included Notes from the Land of the Dead, One and Other Poems, and Fifteen Dead. These titles illustrate a much darker and deeper aspect of Kinsella's poetry. With these collections, Kinsella made the reader realize that the poems were connected to one another. To fully grasp the poetry, Kinsella had written the volumes so that to fully understand one of them, you had to understand the whole collection. The Jungian phase moved to a more refined style, while still retaining some of these newer aspects, called the Peppercanisters phase.
The Peppercanisters phase, named for the printing press that Kinsella started himself, lasted from 1988-1994 and was gathered into two volumes, Blood and Family and From Centre City. Blood and Family illustrated Kinsella dwelling over his personal experiences and relationships with key people in his life. This first volume was just a collection of five Peppercanister pamphlets. From Centre City, one of the last Peppercanister books, was a collection of One Fond Embrace(1988), Personal Places(1990), Poems from Centre City(1990), Madonna and Other Poems(1991), and Open Court(1991). When all of these volumes were incorporated into the one, they lost their titles and became sections of the book. The Dublin centered book deals with a majority of autobiographical information and "is a celebration and castigation of the multifarious world Kinsella felt so strongly about," after spending most of his life there along the canal. (Badin, 156) From Centre City clearly shows his withdrawal from the center of the bustling city to a more secluded County Wicklow. The move "increased the isolation of the poet and caused a further retreat into himself." (Badin, 10)
From Centre City begins with the poem "A Fond Embrace." This is Kinsella's farewell to Dublin and everything associated with the city. It is a farewell full of mixed emotions. The admiration for his "hearth and home" becomes obvious on the first page where he writes of never wanting "to be anywhere else." (Kinsella, 1) Yet, no matter how much fondness he had for his home in Dublin, he was quick to point out the faults. He was upset with the "urinal architects" and city planners for transforming "a bungled city . . . into a zoo." (Kinsella, 2) He continues by describing many people who are despicable in his eyes. Each stanza starts with "You" as if he were pointing an accusing finger at each one, blaming them for the downfall of Irish society. Kinsella was a large supporter of the Irish language and thought that it would help to bring back the Irish culture. On top of the detestable people that he mentions in "One Fond Embrace," he mentions that "the English are a fine people/ in their proper place." (Kinsella, 9) He is not blaming them for all of Ireland's problems, but does not wish for them to be in Ireland. Much of this prologue is in a sarcastic tone, especially when he mentions a "modes proposal:/ everything West of the Shannon,/ women and children included,/ to be declared fair game." (Kinsella, 9) The poem suggests a need for the end to the violence and a pleasure to be leaving Dublin. "One Fond Embrace" leads into the first section, which was formerly titled Personal Places.
Section I is exactly what it's former title meant for it to be. It describes many of the places in Kinsella's memory. Either those that he enjoyed or those that he hated, all the places that he felt close to seem to be included in this section. The places are also people. The "Apostle of Hope" not only talks about the church and mass that he disliked, but the ministers were included as well. Section II, formerly Poems from Centre City, includes people and specific incidents near Kinsella's home near the canal in Dublin. Many of the poems are satirical in nature. After reading a few of these poems, the reasons for Kinsella's withdrawal to the country become more apparent. As much as he loved the city life, there were just as many reasons to hate it. Section III, formerly Madonna and Other Poems, is Kinsella's actual move from the city to the country. Finally, Section IV, formerly Open Court, consists of poems about Kinsella's arrival at his new home and finally finding peace and contentment. The book From Centre City reflects Kinsella's own feelings about leaving a home that he loved, yet hated, to move to the country where there was peace for him and his wife. This theme of his poetry reflecting on his life is the one constant throughout Kinsella's poetry.
The three different phases of Kinsella's poetry represent three distinct lives. The early phase represented a need to express himself in a job where he could not. The Jungian phase gave Kinsella a chance to reflect on himself without the burden of being a public administrator. The Peppercanisters phase gave an understanding to the seclusional life that he has chosen. Kinsella did not want readers to read for their own satisfaction, but more to understand him. The poetry underwent change as he did, as often happens with evolving poets. It does not matter who they are or where they come from, poets are people that change with time, and so their poetry reflects.
Bibliography
Badin, Donatella Abbate. Thomas Kinsella. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996.
Bediment, Calvin. Eight Contemporary Poets. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Kinsella, Thomas. From Centre City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Skloot, Floyd. The Poetry of Thomas Kinsella. America Vol 172, No. 9, New York:
Jesuits of the United States and Canada, pp 30-35, 1995