The Dead Kingdom
$29.95
The oldest theme in Irish literature, the lore of place or Dinnseanchas, provides John Montague with the underlying structure of his hew sequence of poems, The Dead Kingdom. This ancient form is recreated in the linked narratives which mark Montague’s poetic journey across Ireland from Cork, where he now lives, to the locale of his early life in the Fermanagh-South Tyrone area near the border between ulster and the other provinces, the scene of his mother’s funeral.
Each of the five sections or movements which make up The Dead Kingdom has its own pace and theme. Early poems in the book recall Goldsmith in their leisurely evocation of the Irish midlands until, as we move towards the north the mood darkens and the desolation of the poet’s native Ulster is examined with a profound historical sympathy which recalls the mood of montague’s long sequence on Ulster’s history, The Rough Field (1972).
Poetry 1984 • 5.5 x 8.75 inches • PB 96 pages • 9780920428610
Poetry • 6 x 9 inches • PB 96 pages • 978-0-92042-861-0
Here, as in that earlier book, John Montague continues his compassionate exploration of the present tragedy of Ireland. The Dead Kingdom shows his concern not only with local and temporary things but with forces which rule all our lives. In the elegiac poems on his mother he pays a moving homage to the maternal presence and in his blending of the personal and the historical, the autobiographical and the mythical produces finely wrought poems of great power. The Dead Kingdom combines the themes of all Montague’s earlier poetry — historical as in The Rough Field and personal as in The Great Cloak —in his finest book so far.
John Montague, of Irish descent, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929. He has published a substantial body of poetry as well as two collections of short stories, an autobiographical novella and a book of memoirs. Since the early 1970s Cork has been his home, and has become one of the major Irish poets of the 20th Century, continuing to write and publish while into his seventies. The American critic Harold Bloom has Montague in his selection for what he considers The Canon. Montague’s American instincts provide, along with Thomas Kinsella, an important counterweight to the more British influences of other major poets from Northern Ireland such as Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon.
“One concludes The Dead Kingdom with a sense of joy, a realization that even such things as violence and hate … cannot obliterate love, respect and decency.” —Queen’s Quarterly
“The Dead Kingdom — a most impressive, but not a most restful poetic account of present-day Ireland. In its intense and verbal violence the bitterness about a divided homeland brings to mind another exile: Dante.” —Poetry Canada Review
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