SOURCE: “Selective Laurels,” in Sewanee Review, Vol. XCV, No. 3, Summer, 1987, pp. 505-10.

In the following excerpt, Howard praises Kinsella's work as editor of The New Oxford Book of Irish Verse.

To the etymologist an anthology is a gathering of flowers, but to poets, critics, and other interested parties it is almost always a political statement. It swears allegiances and announces disavowals. It redresses grievances—and often creates new ones. If the poems happen to be Irish, the statement will be uncommonly charged, for Irish poetry is today a welter of conflicting allegiances and loyalties, conventions and traditions. Beneath the obvious topographical, political, and religious divisions—North and South, British and Gaelic, rural and urban, Protestant and Catholic—lies a more profound rift between two languages and their attendant traditions. On the one side there is the Anglo-Irish tradition, whose language is Hiberno-English and whose bloodline runs from Swift...