SOURCE: Steele, Peter. “Attention to Feeling: Derek Mahon's Past.” Quadrant 41, no. 12 (December 1997): 63-70.

In the following essay, Steele emphasizes Mahon's relationship to other poets and the role of art in his poetry.

The jacket of Derek Mahon's selected journalism (Journalism: Selected Prose 1970-1995) carries a reproduction of William Hogarth's 1736/7 print The Distrest Poet. In this, a disarrayed poet is shown in his mouldering garret, attempting with the aid of a rhyming dictionary to write a poem on the subject of wealth. He is in a dressing-gown, since his wife is mending his only other clothes. A peremptory-looking milkmaid has just burst into the room with a demand for payment of an overdue bill. A baby howls in the bed, a dog worries a bone, the poet's dropped sword is on the floor. On a small shelf are volumes by the immensely successful Alexander Pope, whose most celebrated work...