The Great Hunger and its place in Kavanagh's poetry

There are certain parallels between the great hunger and Iniskeen Road: July Evening. Both lonely etc. but it's main use is to compare it to his later work where he's calmer and more reflective (e.g. canal back walk).

P.S. Feel free to let me know if you want more detail.

If you're writing on Kavanagh for the exam, you can get away with writing about just The Great Hunger, as it's so long (even though it's only part of the poem that's on the course, IIRC).

If you're comparing you're going to have to go with contrasting, mostly. It's angrier than his later work, which is all about the mellowness and the appreciating hospitals and canal banks and whatnot; it's also a lot more scathing about the pastoral ideal than his earlier stuff. You could probably do something with the way in which he takes seemingly minor events in his other works ('gods make their own importance' and all that) and makes them important, and look at how Patrick Maguire is a seemingly minor person, but who Kavanagh feels deserves to be at the centre of his greatest poem.

Hope that helps.

^ No such thing

^that was a joke (for all you poetry nazis)

^that was also a joke (for you white people who don't get jokes)

^also a joke (for you... ah you get the idea)

A phrase i use to describe this poem is :

''This poem isnt just about a potato famine, it is about a mentally, spiritually, physically and sexually starved famine''

Carsinian Thau wrote:

Please don't do that. You'll lose at least half the marks immediately (probably closer to three quarters actually). They really would destroy you for that.
You could write an answer that had a significant majority of content about the great hunger but certainly not an entire answer.

They won't, actually. There are no set-in-stone guidelines for the number of poems you have to answer on; they recommend 3-4 but that's only a recommendation. They won't/can't take marks off you for answering on one poem only if you can write about it for the length of an essay (with most poems on the course it would be difficult, hence the general guideline for 3 or 4) and if the question doesn't specifically state that you must refer to more than one poem. You may notice that the Kavanagh question that came up in 2004 says 'poem or poems'. You can absolutely write about one poem if the question enables you to do so and if you can sustain an argument for the duration of an essay; the idea that the markers will 'destroy' you for it is absurd.

claire h wrote:

They won't, actually. There are no set-in-stone guidelines for the number of poems you have to answer on; they recommend 3-4 but that's only a recommendation. They won't/can't take marks off you for answering on one poem only if you can write about it for the length of an essay (with most poems on the course it would be difficult, hence the general guideline for 3 or 4) and if the question doesn't specifically state that you must refer to more than one poem. You may notice that the Kavanagh question that came up in 2004 says 'poem or poems'. You can absolutely write about one poem if the question enables you to do so and if you can sustain an argument for the duration of an essay; the idea that the markers will 'destroy' you for it is absurd.

Where do you get your information from?!

Carsinian Thau wrote:

Where do you get your information from?!

Those lovely people known as English teachers. Also, y'know, I think exam questions that say 'poem or poems' justify themselves.

The official line is that one is expected to have studied six poems, but what is made known at conferences etc is that 3/4 is really all one needs to cover in an answer. If you look at the marking schemes you'll notice they haven't set down any guidelines for how many poems you need to discuss in your answer; in fact they specifically say things like 'the student is not expected to refer to every poem they have studied in their response' and that the student must refer to 'poem/s'.

Generally they do expect that you'll refer to more than one, as is fairly evident from the points they bring up in the marking schemes; the only reason for bringing this up is that it's one of the few poems you could, for all practical purposes, write an entire answer on, which was reflected in the question and the marking scheme the last time Kavanagh turned up.

Happy?

Carsinian Thau wrote:

Sarcasm? Really?


No, but let's agree to disagree on this. My english teacher says no and likes to bring in that he's an examination advisor as often as possible into these types of arguements, while you seem to be using a technicality to justify your position.

That didn't seem like I was agreeing to disagree on this, did it?

Yes, sarcasm. You ask *me* where I get my information while making ridiculous claims about 75% of the marks being taken off because an unwritten guideline hasn't been followed? That's obnoxious.

I wouldn't say I'm using a technicality so much as I feel it's always good to have the concrete evidence - i.e. the marking schemes - to back up the 'this is what so-and-so told me' argument.

I was making a particular point in relation to the OP and the way they could get around a particular issue in their English paper. I believe I'm done.

It depends. Like, The Great Hunger wouldn't have anything to do with themes like childhood or love, but there would be a lot of loneliness, isolation and country life in it. You can avoid it in how you answer a Kavanagh question though, no bother...

Kavanagh was an ill-tempered old bastard (I knew him slightly as a child), but a brilliant poet.

The Great Hunger is pretty TS-Eliotesque, isn't it? It's also a riff (it seems to me) on a painting that was endemic in Irish homes in his time, Millet's The Angelus - an idealised image of the devout peasants happy in their field.

Take a read of The Waste Land by Eliot - isn't the rhythm similar, the way words and images are used?

It's a personal poem - Patrick Maguire, pretending he doesn't want a wife, a fireside, children, being the boyo in the field, hungering for love and pretending he doesn't.

Odd poem to teach to children; it's the kind of thing that you could get really hooked into and obsessed by, but to expect children to study it and enjoy it, hmm.

Especially since 'the life of the peasant', ideal or otherwise, was so central in its time - when Ireland was predominantly an agricultural country - and so much in the past now that we're a country devoted to service industry.