For some reason, the following Slate piece, written by Adam Kirsch, entitled “Why We Love Irish Poets” annoyed me. First of all, I think it is very badly written. 6th grade book report sentences:
Why do we love the Irish so much? In large part it’s because these poets have portrayed an Ireland that seems glamorously different from our own modern, urban, technological society.
“modern, urban, technological…” I think you need a couple more descriptive phrases there, because as it is: I am not really getting what you mean. Additionally: and let me scream this from the rooftops: Ireland is a modern society. It has a long history, filled with Celts and Druids and pagans and dancing across the fields on summer solstices in the year 4,000 B.C. (Whatever). But it is 2003 and Ireland is a modern country. It has roads. It has internet connectivity. Everyone has a cell phone. People zip around in cool cars. They love Shania Twain and Cher and Eminem. They have Virgin megastores. They are not cute quaint little “oh, sure and begorran” peasants anymore.
Some of that condescending attitude towards the Irish came up a bit during the last play I just did, which was set in Ireland. One of the other actors in the show seemed to be amazed that Irish people nowadays had cars, and televisions, and email. “So … we would have a car then?” What? No, you’d have a rickety old donkey-led cart filled with jangling milk bottles and the couple of sheep you want to peddle at the farmer’s market down the road a-ways. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Of course there are still rural areas in Ireland. But most of those people, even people living in hovels, have massive TVs and watch “Survivor” every week like everybody else. My Auntie Bridgie (God rest her soul) in County Kerry comes to mind.
The Slate piece discusses the poetry of Dennis O’Driscoll. Again, using grade-school book-report language.
O’Driscoll, a 48-year-old Dubliner and the author of six collections of poems, is well-known in Ireland and Britain as a poet and critic, but he is little read in the United States. This is a shame, since he is one of the most interesting poets now writing in English.
Is it me, or is that really bad writing?
Here is what it sounds like to me:
I really like poetry. I especially really like Irish poets. Some Irish poets write about faeries and digging in the mud and stuff like that. I like those poems. They’re really good. But some Irish poets write about things that are modern and everyday. Like Irish people at happy hours, or Irish people listening to rap music. Irish people are modern people. That is why I like to read these poems, too. I like to learn about other countries and other lands. But Ireland sounds a lot like America. And this is kind of confusing. But still. I like to read those poems. They’re really good.
It’s the same sort of anti-globalization attitude which would rather see people continue to dig for potatoes in the dirt than have a bit of modernization to make their lives easier. Anti-globalization (in some of its manifestations, not all of them, not all of them, let me be clear) seems to want to preserve native ways of life. But so often that means that what they want to preserve is subsistence agriculture and ignorance. Not all progress is terrible. Running water is good. Electricity is good. But there is a misguided nostalgia at times, towards ways of life that are disappearing (and sometimes disappearing for very good reasons!): “We liked the Irish better when they were quaint and Catholic and driving the cows home through the fields after church.”
The Irish people are damn proud of their long history. James Joyce is on their 5-pound note, for God’s sake. History is everywhere in Ireland. Irish people are in LOVE with the past. But Irish people are also damn proud of the economic turn-around their country has experienced recently, of the boom years, of becoming a modern nation … People are now actually staying in Ireland, to work, to raise families. As opposed to having to emigrate. Ireland is a modern nation. It is doing very well. Irish people are rightly proud of that. They have no desire to go back to the days of poverty-struck yet jolly river-dancing evenings round the peat fire.
The entire tone of the Slate piece is:
“Woah, O’Driscoll’s poems are MODERN. It’s so amazing: In his poems, he shows us that Irish people listen to rap music! Irish girls have black bra straps showing! Irish people have 4 wheel drive, and yuppie bars! Isn’t that AMAZING?? Especially when the OTHER Irish poets, Yeats and Heaney, write poems about a haunted land, filled with ghosts and ancient gods and faeries, and earth…. It’s incredible!”
Here’s a quote from the piece:
As these lines show, O’Driscoll’s Dublin is a version of London or New York.
Dublin IS a version of London or New York. It’s not just O’Driscoll’s interpretation of it. Dublin is a cosmopolitan city, and has been for quite some time. Where the hell have YOU been, sir? Has Adam Kirsch ever been to Ireland? I can’t imagine that he has, or he never could write in such a provincial tone.
Another quote:
A few references to “VAT” (a European tax) and “EC directives” let us know that we are not in America, but otherwise O’Driscoll could be writing about any executive anywhere.
The tone there has the quality of “black people are just like white people! Isn’t that amazing??” Ignorance masquerading as tolerance, or something. “Wow! I went to Chinatown, and it was incredible to me to see groups of Chinese teenagers acting just like groups of white teenagers!” Do you hear yourselves?
Why would you be surprised that people are people, no matter where you go?
One more quote from Kirsch about O’Driscoll’s poetry:
This may seem too ordinary for readers who look to Ireland for a rural authenticity or mythic glamour missing from their own country.
Every Irish person I know is completely annoyed and irritated by Americans who go looking to Ireland for “rural authenticity” or “mythic glamour”. A cultural history is one thing, an ancient past is one thing … but wishing and hoping that the Irish will not evolve past that, will not modernize, and join the rest of the world … is condescending and ignorant.
