The word mistrusted : rhetoric and self-irony in some modern irish poets

Abstract

The bardic expectations instituted by long-standing stereotypes of 'the Irish poet' have persistently proved a source of unease for some post- Yeatsian Irish poets, generating different perspectives on the relationship between poet and audience-as well as on the power (?) of the poetic utterance. If with a poet like Paul Muldoon an avoidance of the bardic is at al1 times made evident (as part of the (self-)deflation entailed by the parodic strategies which have become a hallmark of his writing), in the case of several other poets evasion of the voice-asauthority may prove less obvious, and not devoid of contradictions. This paper will deal with different ways of representing the perplexities of the self as holder of poetic power, drawing mostly on poems by Thomas Kinsella, Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney.