Knowing One's Place in Contemporary Irish and Polish Poetry

Zagajewski, Mahon, Heaney, Hartwig

Inbunden, Engelska, 2012

AvMagdalena Kay

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This title studies how poets from two postcolonial countries, Ireland and Poland, refuse the consolations of roots and belonging, and search for non-traditional modes of exploring identity. Are we allowed to choose where we belong? What pressures make us feel that we should belong somewhere? This book brings together four major poets - Heaney, Mahon, Zagajewski, and Hartwig - who ask themselves these questions throughout their lives. They start by assuming that we can choose not to belong, but know this is easier said than done. Something in them is awry, leading them to travel, emigrate, and return dissatisfied with all forms of belonging. Writer after writer has suggested that Polish and Irish literature bear some uncanny similarities, particularly in the twentieth century, but few have explored these similarities in depth. Ireland and Poland, with their tangled histories of colonization, place a large premium upon knowing one's place. What happens, though, when a poet makes a career out of refusing to know her place in the way her culture expects?This book explores the consequences of this refusal, allowing these poets to answer such questions through their own poems, leading to surprising conclusions about the connection of knowledge and belonging, roots and identity.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2012-02-23
Mått157 x 235 x 21 mm
Vikt532 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor272
FörlagContinuum Publishing Corporation
ISBN9781441116420

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Magdalena Kay is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Canada. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and B.A. in English from Harvard University. She has published articles in journals such as World Literature Today, New Hibernia Review, An Sionnach, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Polish Review, and Comparative Literature.

Introduction. The Margins of Europe: A New Comparison; Chapter 1. The Dynamic Ideal and the Protean Self: Adam Zagajewski; Chapter 2. Figuring Otherness in the Work of Adam Zagajewski; Chapter 3. Belonging on the Edge: Derek Mahon's Outsider Poetics; Chapter 4. Inhabiting the Earth: Derek Mahon's Dissonances and Harmonies; Chapter 5. Belonging as Mastery in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney; Chapter 6. Examining the Structures of Selfhood: Seamus Heaney; Chapter 7. Holding One's Self Outside: Julia Hartwig; Chapter 8. Learning to Speak from Inside: Julia Hartwig; Conclusion. Knowing One's Self; Bibliography; Index.

Through a careful and extensive examination of both Polish and Irish poetries and their prominent contemporary voices, Magdalena Kay's book offers excellent insight into the sense of identity and belonging as filtered through poetic meditation. Her highly nuanced reading, founded on the consequences of history for an individual consciousness and its creative expression, is driven by the imperative of respect for poetic singularity; indeed, seldom does one encounter this kind of synchrony between a critic and a poet. Her eloquently written and coherently structured book adds a new and original perspective to the emerging field of Irish-Polish comparison.