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SOURCE: Redmond, John. “Wilful Inconsistency: Derek Mahon's Verse-Letters.” Irish University Review 24, no. 1 (spring-summer 1994): 96-116.
In the following essay, Redmond compares Mahon's verse-letters to the work of W. H. Auden to highlight his use of a casual tone. Also drawing from Auden's essay on “Light Verse,” Redmond contends that Mahon's efforts to seem casual or self-effacing are undermined by their apparent artfulness.
Perhaps it is surprising to say so but wilful inconsistency is the most persistent feature of Derek Mahon's verse-letters. With their fairly regular rhymes and rhythms and with their very regular eight-line stanzas one might be more inclined to say that they are wilfully conservative and at a narrow, structural level this is so. But at every other level—of diction, of tone, of imagery, of subject-matter—these poems fluctuate to the point of conflict. Inconsistency, like emphasis and hesitation, is one of the aspects of conversation...
This section contains 8,315 words (approx. 28 pages at 300 words per page) |
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