This is the first major anthology of Irish American poetry. It breaks new ground by collecting for the first time the work of over two hundred Irish American poets, as well as other American poets whose work enjoins Irish American themes. The Book of Irish American Poetry draws together the best and most representative poetry by Irish Americans and about Irish America that has been written over the past three hundred years. Daniel Tobin begins with poetry of the populist period (poets such as John Boyle O'Reilly), and moves to the work of Irish Americans who have made an indelible imprint on American poetry: Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, Louise Bogan, John Berryman, Thomas McGrath, Robert Creeley, Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, Galway Kinnell, and Alan Dugan, among others. The anthology concludes with distinctive poems by contemporary Irish Americans whose work is likely to stand the test of time, such as Tess Gallagher, Brendan Galvin, and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The Book of Irish American Poetry recovers many poets who have been forgotten and places already notable figures in American poetry within the context of a distinctively Irish American tradition. to come.

A critical study of the intersection of folk and avant-garde poetics in transatlantic small press poetry networks from the 1950s up to the present.

This original study focusing on four Irish writers – Leslie Daiken, Charles Donnelly, Ewart Milne and Michael Sayers – retrieves a hitherto neglected episode of Thirties literary history which highlights the local and global aspects of Popular Front cultural movements. From interwar London to the Spanish Civil War and the USSR, the book examines the lives and work of Irish writers through their writings, their witness texts and their political activism. The relationships of these writers to George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Nancy Cunard, William Carlos Williams and other figures of cultural significance within the interwar period sheds new light on the internationalist aspects of a Leftist cultural history. The book also explores how Irish literary women on the Left defied marginalization. The impetus of the book is not merely to perform an act of literary salvage but to find new ways of re-imagining what might be said to constitute Irish literature mid-twentieth century; and to illustrate how Irish writers played a role in a transforming political moment of the twentieth century. It will be of interest to scholars and students of cultural history and literature, Irish diaspora studies, Jewish studies, and the social and literary history of the Thirties.

This is the first major anthology of Irish American poetry. It breaks new ground in the field of Irish American literary scholarship by collecting for the first time the work of over two hundred Irish American poets, as well as other American poets whose work enjoins Irish American themes. What does it mean to be an Irish American poet? The Book of Irish American Poetry answers this question by drawing together the best and most representative poetry by Irish Americans and about Irish America that has been written over the past three hundred years. The question is not merely rhetorical, claims Daniel Tobin in the introduction, for it raises the issue of a certain kind of imaginative identity that has rarely, if ever, been adequately explored. This anthology brings together exemplary poetry of the "populist period" of Irish American verse (in particular the work of poets such as John Boyle O'Reilly), with the work of those Irish Americans who have made an indelible imprint on American poetry: Robinson Jeffers, Marianne Moore, Louise Bogan, John Berryman, Thomas McGrath, John Montague, Robert Creeley, Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, Charles Olson, Galway Kinnell, X. J. Kennedy, and Alan Dugan, among others. Finally, the anthology includes distinctive poems by contemporary Irish Americans whose work is most likely to stand the test of time: poets such as Tess Gallagher, Alice Fulton, Brendan Galvin, Marie Howe, Susan Howe, Billy Collins, Michael Ryan, Richard Kenney, and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The poems in this collection cut across the broad spectrum of American poetry and place Irish Americans within every notable school of American poetry, from modernism to confessionalism and the Beats, from formalism to imagism, and from projectivism to the New York School and Language poets. The Book of Irish American Poetry recovers many poets who have been forgotten and places already notable figures in American poetry within the context of a distinctively Irish American tradition. This important work of literary scholarship will dominate the field for years to come.." . . A prodigious and remarkable work of literary scholarship. This anthology is far more than an original work of scholarship: it is a major act of recovery, which rescues from oblivion the work of important writers who have been the creators of the Irish American literary consciousness. Professor Tobin has achieved the invention of a whole new field. With publication of this anthology, we will finally understand both the scale and importance of Irish American poetry." --Eammon Wall, Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Irish Studies, University of Missouri-St. Louis "More than two hundred poets from the eighteenth century to now are represented in The Book of Irish American Poetry, some resurrected and restored, others seen anew from the perspective of Irish American studies, still others deservedly anthologized for the first time. Poet and editor Daniel Tobin demonstrates beyond question the length, depth, strength and variety of Irish American poetry. His anthology--complete with historical chronology, biographical and explanatory notes, and extensive bibliographies--is the first accurate map of a new territory." --Brendan Galvin, author of Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005 "An informed and informing intelligence, Dan Tobin casts a wide net across the centuries of poetic engagement with Irish and American interaction. The result of his prodigious labor is an indispensable collection--often surprising in its discoveries and juxtapositions, always illuminating of crucial themes." --Charles Fanning, Professor of English and History and Distinguished Scholar, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

This book, by the eminent poetry critic Neil Corcoran, examines the ways in which the work of significant modern Irish, British and American poets interacts with or ‘negotiates’ different contexts – historical, social, political, artistic and aesthetic. In Part 1 important work by David Jones, Robert Graves, Seamus Heaney and Bob Dylan is shown to negotiate poetic methods – both traditional and modernist – and also the work of major earlier writers to produce strikingly original new forms; and Derek Mahon’s prose is read in the light of these concerns. The books shows how, by negotiating in this way, their work engages profoundly with complex and sometimes terrible histories, including the First World War and the Northern Irish Troubles. Part 2 discusses the ways in which ‘ekphrastic’ work – poems which engage with visual art – by Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Graham, John Ashbery, Sylvia Plath and Ciaran Carson negotiates comparable poetic and historical inheritances while also inventively responding to work by significant artists, notably Parmigianino, Poussin, de Chirico, Klee and members of the St Ives School. The book is a signal contribution to current critical debates about these poets, situating them in original or newly clarified contexts, and it offers exemplary close readings of noteworthy poems.

Irish literature's roots have been traced to the 7th-9th century. This is a rich and hardy literature starting with descriptions of the brave deeds of kings, saints and other heroes. These were followed by generous veins of religious, historical, genealogical, scientific and other works. The development of prose, poetry and drama raced along with the times. Modern, well-known Irish writers include: William Yeats, James Joyce, Sean Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, John Synge and Samuel Beckett.