[Patrick Kavanagh's "Collected Poems" show him to be] the strongest poet to have come of age in Ireland under the inhibiting shadow of Yeats…. A poor peasant, he was reared … in "the stony grey soil of Monaghan," on a 16-acre hill-farm…. [The theme of "The Great Hunger"] is not the Irish potato famine, but famine in man's soul and frustration in his body. The central image is an unmarried peasant tethered to the clay by his mother, respectable and loveless. Kavanagh now says that he dislikes the poem because "Tragedy is underdeveloped Comedy, not fully born," but he wrote it with humor and compassion. He created an Everyman of the Irish countryside, a moral poem where each part fits accurately together, the story beautifully narrated with a rhythm that responds to shifts of mood…. The sharp details of this great work contribute to a terrible and moving image...