"The Trout," which I have long adored, is proof positive of just how good Montague could be. I do have this sense that all the Irish poets kind of collapsed into a shambling modernity: Kinsella, Kavanagh, Montague, Richard Murphy, saddest of all, Heaney. Not to mention the execrable youngsters like Muldoon. All in reaction to what? Yeats? They couldn't sing any more. Thank heavens the Hayes and the Murray seem relatively uncontaminated by American fashions which have derailed the Irish.
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