Previous Day
Highlights and lowlights
Irish Times critics choose the best and worst of the arts
in 2007 p
Book Reviews
The early years of Ezra Pound
Biography: On the shelves of Greene's now vanished Dublin book shop, on the first landing, one found dusty copies of the collected poems of the Romantics. I came away with a complete Byron, for my summer holidays among the donkeys of Longford. A complete Shelley, in a red binding, I declaimed to the cattle in Garvaghey. They were even less impressed, and I placed it among Butler's Lives of the Saints , as part of the paraphernalia of a pious household. pBranching out
Nature: Thomas Pakenham is a tree connoisseur in the way that other people are wine connoisseurs. He knows the best, the rarest, the oldest and the most interesting of trees, and he is able to convey his connoisseurship to us through his breathtaking photographs and his accessible, often whimsical, text. pThe consistent contrarian across time
Diaries: Kevin Myers is, I suppose, the Irish contrarian par excellence. His journalism is deeply adversarial, opposed to what he sees as the regnant Irish cant: the self-congratulatory nationalistic, and, on social and international affairs, the bien-pensant liberal. pThe lay of the land
Local History: Richard Roche on Donegal's delights, the hidden streams of Dún Laoghaire and 'the deepo' in the park pA strong Cork showing
Poetry: The Best of Irish Poetry annual anthology is in its second year now. It's a handsomely produced collection published by Southword Editions. Patrick Cotter, director of the Munster Literature Centre, whose initiative it is, writes that such a venture reclaims "from the New York and London publishing centres authority over the formulation of an Irish Canon". pA world away from the war
Criticism: This is a remarkable book. It is cogent, intriguing and illuminating. It assesses the literary value of certain prominent children's authors - with some surprising parallels drawn and conclusions reached - and applauds unexalted juvenile fiction as an incomparable resource of children in wartime. pA distant voice that still resonates
Biography: By the time of his death in the US in 1984 Seosamh Ó hÉanaí was Ireland's best known singer of traditional songs in Irish, an sean-nós, and unique among sean-nós singers in pursuing his art with an ambition and constancy which demanded that he live by his singing. While his contemporaries, Nioclás Tóibín, Darach Ó Catháin and Máire Áine Ní Dhonnachadha all had greater vocal range, Ó hÉanaí's voice had a low, deep resonance which was unmatchable in its charge. p
No escape from reality
TV Review: Attempting a round-up of the TV year feels like the literary equivalent of herding several flocks of neurotically individualistic sheep into a rather tight pen, so inundated with choice are we in this bloated, digitalised era. pShopping with the Scrooges
Radio Review: Just when you think you've heard every possible angle on Christmas shopping - Pat Kenny's (Tuesday) producers come up with quite the daftest, albeit weirdly compelling, one. p'I've ever noticed him actually laugh - and all of a sudden I think we're both going to have a basic hort attack we're laughing that hord'
It's time to visit the old man before his first Christmas in jail - but, between the Nespresso machine and the daydreams, he's obviously gone off his cake in here. p
