SOURCE: Bakken, Christopher. “Derek Mahon and the Vocational Muse.” The Gettysburg Review 15, no. 4 (winter 2002): 637-56.

In the following essay, Bakken reflects on Mahon's attitude toward work in his Collected Poems. Bakken sees in Mahon's verse a strong sense of irony and a critical nature, both of which Mahon often turns on himself and his art.

A journey to the poetic realm of Derek Mahon might begin at a street in Greenwich Village, one still haunted by Dylan Thomas. We could draw a line from there to the top of Hart Crane's bridge, make the requisite pivot and dip, then sail the deep Atlantic. Arriving at last on the blessed Irish soil, we might visit Wilde and Yeats, but we would stay away from lauded Heaney—yes, that is a laurel wreath crowning his head, but we shall not look. Mahon must be granted his own contemporary terrain, for...