please help me wit kavanagh

eireplaygirl

omg i need help with kavanagh can sum1 just tell me wat his poems are about generally!

I have learned plath nd i nearly finishd bishop.

do u think ill be safe with dem 3?

i really hope so cas i really want plath to come up i done really well with my mocks with her question!!! :eek: :eek:

FunkZ

I've only learned Plath, you're in a better situation than me!

eireplaygirl

ye the same really i tryin t do sestina and 1st death in nova scotia but cant do them! wats the chances wel be ok with just plath i stil have t study macbeth now and my comparative :eek:

Evd-Burner

ive only learned kavanagh and yeats tbh one of them has to come up...

Mushy

He's very subjective, places a hell of a lot of emphasis on religion. This is mainly done through redemption(the poem Advent). He is searching for a rebirth, and hints at a previous "bad" life in the past in the opening line. He seems much happier in the poem, Canal Bank Walk, as if he's found what he was looking for in Advent(redemption). This is after his brush with lung cancer, so he feels he wants to enjoy life, not just live it as if he has too.

He structures his poems in a very unique way. He sometimes uses Shakespearean sonnets, others he uses Patrarch way. And even then, in some poems, he mixes these, creating a very unique style to his poems.

His main images focus on either religion or nature. Nature are very easy images to use, as you can see from Canal Bank Walk. "Green water of the canal pouring redemption". Ya see, mixes both religion and nature.

Hope that helps a bit.

WildCardDoW

I have this, a fairly average 5th year essay, might help you: [I think it's actually unfinished! :X]

KAVANAGH:

One of the most appealing features of Patrick Kavanagh’s poetry is the simplicity of his poetry. While Kavanagh’s poetry deals with, at times, complicated topics we are never left in doubt regarding his thoughts or his feelings. Kavanagh uses simple language throughout his poetry. He uses the language of ordinary speech in his poems, they almost feel like conversations and this allows us to connect with Kavanagh more than we can any other poet on the course, his poetry is accessible and immediate. Examples of Kavanagh’s simple language include when he speaks of “barrowing dung”, “bog-holes” and “wash-basins”. He insists we must speak of love without “claptrap” and longs for his soul to be dressed with “green and blue things”. Kavanagh does not go into great details to explain this, we understand what he means when he speaks of these “green and blue things” or when he speaks of how love affects objects: “this is what love does to things”. We connect with Kavanagh’s thoughts and ideas, we understand how he feels this love for “the Hospital” despite its drab and boring appearance. Sometimes Kavanagh includes direct speech into his poems: “Damn your soul” or invents phrases to capture everyday activities he explores in his work – “the wink-and-elbow language of delight”, “Leafy with love banks”
Kavanagh elevates ordinary objects with unexpected use of adjectives – the grass is “fabulous”, light is “fantastic”, the bird is “delirious” and the stick is “bright”. To suggest the beginning of the Christian religion, Christ’s birth, he simply refers to the stable as the “place where time begins”. This underlines the effect he feels Christ’s’ birth had on the world, before this there was nothing. Spiritual redemption is captured in the simple image of the “January flower” while the rare freedom of the gravelled yard is conveyed by the use of the word “inexhaustible”. Kavanagh sets his work in places that he knows and mentions them by names, rooting them into our minds, the streets of “malignant Dublin” and the banks of “the Grand canal”. He names the towns of “Ballyrush and Gortin” and gives the farmers their names: “McCabe”

Kavanagh also believes in celebrating the ordinary in his poetry. The simplest things are for Kavanagh a direct reflection of God’s love in the world. The banks are decorated artfully with leaves for our aesthetic pleasure by God: “leafy with love banks”. He insist that “life pours ordinary plenty” and he would should live in the “habitual, the banal”. The couple kissing on the seat are joined by the breeze, the bird builds it’s nest for “the Word”, it is comforting to think that these acts of everyday life are the will of God. Kavanagh pains to how the world is infused with beauty, from the brown waters of the canal to the dim grey walls of a hospital. He simply states: “this is what love does to things”.

In “Epic” Kavanagh’s ability to transform local matters into universal themes is clear. He remarks “Gods make their own importance” and stresses this throughout this poem. Kavanagh also sets all his poems in areas he knows, he never imagines, it is all real. Kavanagh stresses the idea that to the farmers of “Gortin and Ballyrush” the half of rood of rock is more important than the Munich bother, it is comparable to World War 1 or to the Epic battle of Troy, he comments thatHomer made the “Illiad from such”.