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Something fun for Saint Patrick's Day

Here is a Thomas Moore quote that has been in my mind.

“The Irish are among a select few remaining on the earth in whom an alternative, soul-filled approach to ordinary living is still alive.”

I am not sure about Irish being among a few select. I am not really interested in putting one group of people above another. But I am interested in finding haiku by Irish poets that seem “soul-filled.”

Can you think of any?

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. There is Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s

    Dangerous pavements…
    But this year I face the ice
    With my father’s stick

    And there is an interesting article by Mr. Heaney relating Japanese poetry to Old Irish verse:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/nov/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview21

    (as an aside, I would like to share a story I once heard an American poet tell, in which Mr. Heaney’s wife is reported to have said something to the effect that no one has ever complained about a glass of whiskey being too large, or a poetry reading being too short. This, to me, captures the Irish soul, at least in relation to whiskey and poetry readings!)

    Larry

  2. Well, Thomas Moore was Irish, wasn’t he? 🙂

    What’s designated “soul-filled” might depend on various cultural definitions.

    But you don’t have to look far to find haiku by Irish poets that contain ‘soul’ or anything else that we might find in haiku. Some only write in Gaelic, but many write in English. Here are just four from the current issue of *A Hundred Gourds* :

    discarded monuments[3 spaces]the afterlife of shadows

    Anatoly Kudryavitsky – Ireland

    first anniversary
    we choose not to enter
    the Garden of Remembrance

    Maeve O’Sullivan – Ireland

    early dusk
    my children’s footsteps
    fill the stillness

    Marion Clarke – N. Ireland

    glaring winter sun
    I cut across the path
    of a hearse

    Thomas Powell – N. Ireland

    – Lorin

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