The poet skewers traditional depictions of Irish country life and highlights
the era’s sexual sterility in his long satirical work

Sat, May 16, 2015, 01:00

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These mocking lines from Patrick Kavanagh’s long poem The Great Hunger
echo in their dark satire Myles na gCopaleen’s attack, in An Béal
Bocht, on the representation of Irish rural life. Kavanagh is the first
English-language poet of real stature to emerge from a class that was