SOURCE: “Patrick Kavanagh: A Comment,” in Renascence, Vol. 21, No. 2, Winter, 1969, pp. 81–87.

In the excerpt below, Fahey points out what he considers to be exemplary passages in both Kavanagh's short verse and long poem The Great Hunger.

“Irishness is a form of anti-art. A way of posing as a poet without actually being one.” The complaint is Patrick Kavanagh's. And remembering such crocks full of Irishry as James Stephens, the coy skull-cappery of O'Casey, and Lady Augusta, Gregorian chanteuse, one could not but be wary of encountering, on a trip to Ireland,

Paddy of the Celtic Mist, Paddy Connemara West, Chestertonian Paddy Frog Croaking nightly in the bog. All the Paddies having fun Since Yeats handed in his gun. 

The cautionary attitude proved unnecessary on my trip to Ireland this summer. Though he has not perhaps given up his post as Patron of Irish Letters, “the devil mediocrity” reigns...