Thomas Kinsella Poetry

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I agree that the poetic world of Thomas Kinsella is concerned with darkness and decay but it is also true that the poet provides insights and a way of accepting the darkness and decay. Kinsella confronts the realities of life, suffering and death in his poetry but he is not purely interested in exploring these elements of humanity in isolation; rather, he seeks to reflect on them to find meaning and possibly acceptance within. Kinsella finds more often than not the importance of love and human relationships in countering the darker facets of life. The poet uses sensuous imagery and sounds in his explorations. His poetic world is an exploration of the harsh realities of life so that he can understand and make sense of these realities. The poem Mirror in February is an example of a poem where the poet seeks to understand the decay brought about by the passage of time and make sense of the experience. The contrasting images of life and death are invoked immediately in the first stanza as ‘The day dawns with scent of must and rain.’ The images and smells of ‘opened soil’ and ‘fading lamp’ sets up the idea of a natural world filled with decay. This is echoed in the physical appearance of the poet as he looks in the mirror and is horrified at what he sees – ‘a dark, exhausted eye / a dry downturning mouth.’ The poet uses pathetic fallacy to create an analogy between man and nature and the way in which the destructive forces of time are evident in both. The natural world is an ‘untiring, crumbling place of growth’ where the ‘awakening trees’ are ‘hacked clean’. Again, Kinsella contrasts images of fertility and hope with one of stagnancy and decay where even within the process of growth, there is suffering. The poet feels the process of human growth too brings with it inevitable suffering because ageing brings one nearer to inevitable death. This is made more unbearable
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