Away :
This is a reply to someone who has tried to assert moderation. It says go away. Don't hold me back (anchor me). Gavin's anger needs expression lest it erupts inappropriately aimed, or worse (to him), dissolve, taking, with it, his soul. He sees himself as a being of anger, the incarnation of rage, a fury. Indignation must be acted on until the wrongs of the past are righted.

McGuiness in his travels spent many years as a sailor and also as a farmer. His sea days were about equally divided as a sign-on hand on merchant marine vessels and as a fisherman. Once the authorities got wind of striking poetry retold by sailors and began asking questions, he was gone.

The anchor is a nautical metaphor of the man himself. It is not too different from the land metaphor of being "planted", rooted in a cause.


Against You :
One of his most recent poems, this is not one of his poetic best, to be sure. However, it clearly provides insight to his breaking a vow of literary silence, of English - that is. The voice of the piece is certainly McGuiness. But the tone suggests that he is, himself, the intended listener, the conversation of a man talking to himself, considering alternatives, goals.

Gavin had been living in America for some time. We know, for certain, that part of that time was in Ohio and in Illinois. An association with a Mr. Reilly settled him for a period. That settling was not destined to last due to his friend's ill health. The old rage resurfaces, as evidenced by this piece written just after the death of his American friend.

The topic is fairly straightforward. Gavin McGuiness accepts that the language of
America is not English. He adopts 'American' as a language of power, a weapon in his fight. He concedes the power of English, but asserts the greater power of the offspring language.

He sets out an agenda. Some of the military imagery derives from his association with Richard Reilly who studied military history in retirement after a long military career.


Clutch:
Four images of fists. The first, a hand holding a bouquet of flowers. The second, a gesture of determination. The third, a robber's grip on a bag of loot. The last, and worst, a choke hold. Murder. Gavin thrives on double and triple meanings. It ought not be lost on the reader that a clutch is also a bag. The title could very well read, "In the Bag."


Maps :
The systematic removal of Irish references, names, and history from current place names and activities is rejected. The natural, historic, and obvious is not explicable by the current Anglicized divisions and terminologies. It is the linguistic corollary of genocide. Refer also to the comments for 'Cousins'.


Mavourneen :
A very concise Katherine-Caitlin love declaration. His love and his country are intertwined images.


Mother :
An excellent translation of one of the early works, that demands the distinction
between words and deeds. This piece asks the very obvious question, if "MOTHER
ENGLAND" is a nurturer, as she claims, and not a predator in a guise, then explain
the behavior.


Muse :
Clearly a counter argument to a demand to be temperate in language. This is an early work written before the "kidnapping". Already McGuiness is under pressure to be quiet. He is the victim of the bureaucratic ruse that asserts that anybody loud or making uncomfortable statements is disruptive AND seditious. Evil is OK. Being loud against evil is not. This poet does not seek approval, but awareness. Are 'JUSTICE' and 'LAW and ORDER' even related, philosophically?

Planted :
It isn't clear from the manuscripts when this piece originated. It has the temperament of older reflection. It asks, "Do I carry this burden alone?". It is an ever harder task with time.

The author is, metaphorically, an old sturdy tree on a mountain seen from a beach below. Viewing north, the upward branches seem to support the North Star and thus the heavens. The sky, so seen, seems to pivot on the tree itself.

Is it the duty of this lone tree to sustain the motion of the universe? Lonely and rigid in a singular task of duty, the tree looks with guarded envy at the playful morning fog that rolls from off the ocean and up the lower slopes of the mountain before it melts away, at the sand piper that plays both on the sand and in flight, at storms that can come and go, at the seasons, and at change in general. It asks, "Am I of ONE CHOICE?


Prayer :
Probably with Katherine in his arms this thought, "God, If you must take her, please take me with her." In determining that Gavin and Katherine were not Romeo and
Juliet, it is well to begin here. Unrequited love long antedates Shakespeare. The power is in the nature of the conflict and in the eventual resolution. These are very different stories.


Promise :
There are no notes on this translation. From the original, the going opinion is that the
'SHE' in the poem is opportunity. In many ways McGuiness blames himself for
Caitlin's death.

His father repeatedly warned him of the range of evil of which the 'Royalists' [sic] were capable. As the official powers were, young Gavin thought, constrained to the 'law', really, what could they do as long as you don't overtly break the law? The answer was an intolerable lesson. As in 'Bitter Lessons', some lessons do not educate but rather destroy the pupil. Would it have been better to have been quiet and gone along with the 'captivity'?

Requiem :
Clearly, and supported by the manuscript notes, the poetic restatement of one of his father's stories wherein McGuiness senior, still wounded and bleeding, performed the burial ceremonies for his fallen comrades after an IRA reprisal raid. A field behind a farmhouse that was destroyed by the English is the hallowed ground.

An interesting assertion is made that the failure to unite and participate in uprising causes more death. Gavin McGuiness states that the enemy wouldn't persist but for the perception of disunity. He calls uninvolvement "matricide".


Sons :
Irish history lesson. The question is whether the many churning power upheavals are a part of some global movement or merely random transient misfortunes. If the latter, then perhaps the current evil will also bubble away. If not, then a long road of hardship lies ahead. 'Flag' offers a related lesson, perhaps the solution.


Drum :
The Ulster men parade each year behind a big base drum to celebrate the drummers of the English invaders who dispatched the natives and took the land. Specifically, the events related to the Irish losses at the Boyne are the derivation of the celebration.

The parade is not just a local historic notation of history, but a serious provocation bred of deep arrogance. Passing through the poor catholic communities, whose land was confiscated, by law, and whose not too distant relatives were systematically murdered and driven out, this is about the same as a Nazi parade through a Jewish
community.

Many of the Belfast riots followed similarly initiated insightful confrontations.


Tom Barry :
An early member and officer of the IRA started out as a recruit in the English army during World War I. Fighting in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers he was unaware that, at home, Irish patriots were being systematically hanged.

Altered versions of English news papers were forwarded to the troops which removed all content of any unrest in Ireland, let alone a policy of hangings. Learning of the Easter Rebellion and Irish hangings, on returning home, was a severe psychological blow that transformed a bored action seeking Irish teenager into a raging soldier patriot.


Touched :
This is said to be about the moments just before Gavin's fiancee died. The clash of hope and uncompromising real events result in HIS spiritual death. Caitlin's demise is repeatedly expressed as HIS death. She lived. He died.


Vision :
His only view of the world for four years in captivity was a small crack in the mortar of the stone walled dungeon and his own mental vision. The former allowed just a pinhole view of the sky.


Waves :
A later piece, the dual representation of waves as a travel in time through memory and also as the effects of drinking that, perhaps, overcome the repression of painful memories. Pain of loss is clearly expressed. It is too vivid and shared by the reader to be called 'touching'. It crosses a line into the realm of tragedy.


Words :
Another poem dealing with official usage of language as a means of suppression. Law as a vehicle for treachery cloaked behind facades of platitudes. The generality falls to the specific. The specific is verbal concoction without substance of justice.

A gerrymander is a good example. Highly constructed of details, specificity, it is totally devoid of any pretense of evenhandedness. Pair that with bizarre voting rules that allow certain kinds of persons as many as three to four votes (each) and which deny entire categories of persons as having any vote have only a rigged outcome as real purpose. However, specifically enacted, they are 'THE LAW". Disrespect for 'THE LAW' is criminal. Again law without justice IS oppression.


Unsaid :
Interestingly, McGuiness looks to the Scots as brothers. He is known to have many friends and supporters in Scotland. Here, he asks the historical question , "Who benefits from the deaths in all these wars?" It is a caution against rising in response to calls from overnments which use guile that plays on manliness or patriotism. He is telling the listener to think it through. A goddess of war feeds on the deaths of men. Men in high places sell their souls to this entity. The power of the mob does not benefit the mob.

See also the comments about Mag Aonghusa versus son of Angus, in 'Cousins' notes.


Valley :
Perhaps a self salve. Just because there is beauty or inspirational quality, don't expect security. Nature is devoid of security. Enjoy the good while it is good. Nature is two edged.


Winked :
Gavin is an Irish story teller whose function is, sometimes, to take a story and pass it on - imroved. Two poems, 'He Winked' and 'Faded Memories' are the same story retold from varied perspectives.

Having lived in America, in various places, Gavin often repaid kindliness with gifts of poetic renderings of the lives of his benefactors. Dick Reilly was the most
prominent.

Mr. Reilly was a kindred soul to Gavin. Reilly 'lost' his love to the tragedy of competition. He, actually, never gained her approval, initially. A flashy but hollow character seduced this girl of his boyhood dreams just as Reilly went off to war. In Patton's Third Army, totally heart broken, the young soldier lost himself, threw himself, into the glorious battles of the world at war. He married a cause, Patton's cause. See 'Violins of Autumn'.

Many years later, Reilly married the woman who had been the dream girl of his childhood fancy. They courted without her ever realizing the degree to which he had been in love with her as a young man.

McGuiness gives this romance two very interesting slants. One draws from his own tragedy in "Faded Memories". The other taps the years he spent as a sailor in merchant fleets, a nautical vantage in "He Winked ".

The settled years that McGuiness spent with Mr. Reilly ended with Reilly's death. The toast to this friend is, as far as we know, the last selection not dealing with the throes of Ireland, although several of the older poems were revised to fit this man's memory.

Richard Reilly was an amateur historian whose pursuit of the details of war reflects in the content of some of the best of McGuiness's works.

The 'Empty Dance' was written from notes Reilly used for a lecture given at a meeting of The Daughters of the American Revolution. It was a lecture on the plight of the men who fought in World War I. Having seen the actual notes, consisting of just lists of statistics such as tons of rations, numbers of trench foot casualties, metal requirements of the war, and such, I cannot imagine how the imagery of that poem emerged. But then, I am not McGuiness.


The Violins of Autumn :
This follows rather closely on the events immediately before, during and after the "break out" of the third army. It is a startling retelling from the soldier's psyche. One wonders how the poet got that deeply into his friend's mind to literally become him.

See also 'Winked'.

Note, again, the marriage metaphor as depicting duty and dedication.


Empty Dance :
The great war, WW 1, was also the lonely war, the war of endless trenches and filth. What would an archaeologist think, if the diggings from the old burried trenches had no written history? McGuiness sees a strange rigor mortis conveying the real torment which was not death, but lonely abandonment.

A book end to 'The Violins of Autumn', 'Empty Dance' also metaphorically links the
posture of death with mislead postures to empty ideals. Consider the sentiments of Tom Barry.


Summertime Lullaby:
This is a curious piece. On one hand it describes the beauties of nature in comfortable lulling tones. Then, it presents a solemn fact or perhaps implication. At face value, life, even comfortably lived, ends. At a deeper level and consistent with a theme found in more than a few of his other works, the beautiful and comforting things blind you with comfort to the bad. They set you up.

At a very primal level, youthful Gavin's failure to believe in the evil that his father warned about destroyed his future. His life was "robbed", as he expressed in another piece. The poem warns against youthful perception more than anything else, taken in context.


Marigolds :
Rather simple poem that describes the square outside the home of the poet Yeats. In that square, marigolds are planted. The ideas which Yeats put forward are still alive and bright and as evocative as when he first penned them. This is in contrast to the cold and ever double-speaking politicians that have succeeded each other.


Bitter Lessons :
If a friend asks a favor, don't ask why or for details. That friend might not have the insight nor the ability to fully express the seriousness of the need. Damage to a friend by inaction is damage to oneself.


Dingle Strand :
I don't think there is any hidden message in this poem, but I could be wrong. The interest is in the playful structure set out in discrete thoughts of three lines structured in a/b/a/b rhyme of four lines plus a swap to a/a/b/b including same line rhyme. This is a unique poetic structure. Rhymes in lines of four grouped in threes. Ahh, there is the hidden message - a unique and interesting form to help visualize a unique and interesting landscape!


Taken :
Written shortly after Caitlin's death, the original version of this poem was an out and out hit list. It actually named names of captors whose future was questioned. They all died violently.

This reworking, generalizes that list. The severe torment of the original poem is not heard in this translation. This version is organized. The original, translated line by line, is erratic, almost shuffled. I don't speak Gaelige with the fluency of Professor Synge, perhaps he will recite the original for us, nevertheless the sound of the original is definitely more scary. You wouldn't want to be in the same room with any man making those sounds.

I challenge an 'E' student to portray this American translation, adaptation, with the same generation of terror as Professor Synge evokes from the original. Guaranteed A+. Good effort, failing, gets a B. Takers? If so, notify Jane in my office.


Thus Siobhan :
Reportedly, a child was thrust at McGuiness by two proud supporters. "We love you Gavin! Could you bless this child with your words?" These were the words.


On Whispers :
I think I cried when I read this one. I'm not sure if it was out loud, or just an internal reaction.

The date of this piece is not recorded. It has the feel of mature reflection, but I wouldn't bet on it.

We learn from this poem, that the dungeon cells of Gavin and Katherine were in the same hallway. Evidently they could not see enough to know if someone was near and able to overhear. One gets the impression that whispered conversations took place at night, when the likelihood of being heard was lessened. The speaking in Gaelige, only, probably began this way


Ocean :
The original was constructed during the four years incarceration. It needs no
additional words. Comparisons with older literature fails to find parallels. Know of any?


Black Shore :
This one really calls out to the imagination. Have you ever just gazed at the sky for hours on hours - wondering about life on other planets? Here, the land of the far shore fades to black as night falls.

Lights, on land, on the other side, twinkle in continuity with stars in the night sky. These are land stars. McGuiness is too Earth bound to reach out to heavenly stars. Instead, he reaches out to hope, even impossible miraculous hope, that the star on which he wishes is the light of some house where his love awaits him.

Aware of the impossibility of such wishful thinking, he reflects on the inevitability of the process.

He then wonders if people on the far shore have suffered as has he, and wishes them well. He suggests that few, knowing him, would wish him peace. Thus he relies on the anonymity of the darkness, that of his own candle in the night, for return blessings. His best chance for a prayer for his soul is if someone sees his light as a far away star from their shore and blindly offers up a prayer in his behalf.

There is a strong implication that Gavin thinks he has no voice before God. He wants God's blessing but cannot drop his sword. "Vengeance shall be mine, as well." is a frequently quoted McGuiness-ism.


Superficiality Song :
(This is a condensation of a student submission)
This poem really kicks butt. It never ceases to amaze me how people have deep convictions on subjects about which they know nothing. This is especially true in the case of events wherein our friends are not behaving in the most humanitarian way.

If the official word is that England is in Ireland BECAUSE CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS ARE KILLING EACH OTHER, then that's it. It couldn't be that Belfast Harbor has huge economic value to England nor that the mercantile policies of England draw upon ruling other nations to insure raw goods for industry. No. That couldn't be it.

The reality is that Catholics and Protestants get along rather well in the Republic of Ireland, where the "Church of Ireland" is a protestant sect in a Catholic majority country. Explain an elected Jewish mayor of Dublin.

The tying of oppression to religion was the handiwork of William of Orange, a Dutchman who took power in England. An attempt was made, and failed, to exterminate the Irish from Ireland, including the children "Nits become lice.". That genocidal power still exists and exalts it's supremacy as a God given right to privilege. It is just another instance of apartheid.

The English people are a very nice people. Really. But they have a schizophrenic government with half of it representing the power of a handful of heirs, thinking they are gods - they call them selves "Lords" and they mean it. The history of these ruling families is a litany of genocide, fratricide, matricide, patricide, looting, debauchery and every imaginable evil. Some lords! The eternal inbred genetic trait they carry in dominant genes is arrogance.

This is the charge McGuiness makes. It isn't religion. Religion is a smoke screen. It is about the arrogance of a predatory ruling class that has been tossed out of the Americas, out of India, out of Africa, out the orient, but not yet out of Ireland.

It's amazing that Catholics and Protestants get along in the Republic of Ireland, in the Americas, in all the places where the English have been evicted but not in the one place where they persist and insist that they are the keepers of peace.


Burned Meadow :
Here the metaphorical and allusionary falls to the overt. McGuiness was robbed of the life he sought. He declares himself empty of purpose.


Daniel O'Connell :
This great Irish patriot subverted the banning of Irish political parties by forming rganizations for the homeless, poor, sick and downtrodden. He sought financing for the fight by requesting that every member pledge a single penny a month to the cause (party).


One More Chime :
Yeats wrote about four times that chimes were rung in the history of Ireland. Each was a death knell, tolling a chance for freedom missed. McGuiness suggests that a fifth chime is due. This one is the death knell of the English grip.


John :
John Gilmartin was a drinking buddy during the years that McGuiness farmed and in the south of Ireland. John's wife, Mary, scolded both John and Gavin relentlessly as being too "detached" - her word for uninterested in social climbing.

That she was shunned from admission to an art society consisting mostly of foreigners living on Irish soil led to her rejecting her husband as a husband for over a year. Gavin called this her "finest blessing", as the once faithful John sewed quite a few wild oats in the latter half of that year. So many children were born with the same wild red hair, that set John apart, that McGuiness noted "The man never misses a shot."


Life Seeds :
A farmer talks to his horse who pulls a plow. He relates that even as master of a mere beast, he could not hold respect with empty promises. Unfulfilled promises or hopes are not productive.


Seasons :
The poet sees himself as one of many whose essential being is innate and plays out to a careful scheme set by nature. But what happens when the sequence is
thwarted?


Whiskey :
Here McGuiness mixes the metaphors of spirits - whiskey - and spirituality that derives from truth. "There's spirit in the truth" that can make you fall down from the unsteadying insights. He appeals to his Scottish brothers for spiritual support.


The Cliffs of Moher :
Pronounced 'Moor'. These towering dead vertical cliffs were the sight of a massacre. The jubilant troops of William of Orange celebrated their victorious invasion by throwing the entire population of the nearby village off these cliffs.


Killing Skies :
(Excerpts from a student submission)

How could McGuiness have killed so many men, more importantly, men living very far away from each other in too narrow a time frame for a single man to have been the cause? This poem gives the clue. These are not the thoughts that ought to come from McGuiness. He is clearly giving life to someone else's thoughts. The notes which accompanied the American manuscript (see Appendix D in workbook 'a') confirm a long-standing rumor. Katherine's twin brother, Ian, formed the group called Brithim.

Although only Protestants in Ulster had the privileges of the Ulster apartheid, not all Protestants were included. Many were deemed part of the general riff raff.* Ian wasted himself in "four brutal and hopeless years" of appealing to authorities, letter writing, petitioning, and even attempting to get a law suit active in the perverted but official legal system in order to free his sister.

Much later, totally disillusioned, he was quoted, "If anybody asks you to hold on in faith, just kill them." and also " Faith demands a proper deity, not devils." This poem is McGuiness giving vent to the psyche of his spiritual brother-in-law.

* In October of 1968, for example, a small group of students, Catholic and
Protestant, joined in an attempted civil rights march. It was modeled on the Selma Alabama concept with marchers singing "We shall overcome." What happened was that the RUC, the official police force, first blocked the marchers' route then charged them and beat them with batons - men women and children lying on the streets bloodied.

In the dry tinder of so many similar atrocities, the Bogside riots followed immediately on the news of this event. Violence spread rapidly all over Ulster. But there were no concessions. The Ulster apartheid would not have any of this equality nonsense.
The students' request for 'one man one vote' was an attack on 'Loyalism' and a call
to war as far as the establishment was concerned.

By August the streets of Dungannon were jammed with civil rights activists pushing
for voting parity, also singing American civil rights songs. Guns, gas, gas bombs -
whatever - the police turned a blind eye as these and subsequent protesters were
savaged.


Circles :
Again, Ian's experience given voice by McGuiness. The two personalities blend so imperceptibly that it is hard to pull them apart. That is no accident, as McGuiness dwells on spirit. Two men of one spirit are not divisible. Promises and duties not honored are counted on the stars as infinite tally stones accumulated over vast quantities of time through deceit and stalling. Only violence has possibilities if the process is circular and self serving.

One message comes through from the totality of the works, an ominous one: A truce is a weapon of the oppressor. Revolution cannot permit the oppressor even a moment of solace or rejuvenation. The Russian revolutionaries were so convinced that the royal line would eventually get back, as they always had, that they did not stop with killing those in Russia. They set hit squads to kill those in the line that fled Russia, regardless of where they were.

This, perhaps, brutal characteristic is what has been missing in the Irish attempts to free themselves. They muster one nasty act then sit back to see if the British will say, "Gee. Maybe we ought to let them alone." The American revolution was a military operation that required British absence to be terminated, not truces for discussions that might eventually lead to peace.

This concept permeates McGuiness poetry.


Carry :
The true measure of a man is valor and willingness to act, according to McGuiness. Here, a 'disabled' man proves equality of spirit, short of means. In this case, the means is a woman who sees the man as a man. A woman allows his attainment of self image.


Shells :
In old shell fragments on the beach, memories are evoked which portray solitary efforts which failed against much greater forces. Yet, efforts collectively may rise above impossibility. To that end, the wise thing is to not suffer in silence but organize. Hints to Brithim and general public outrage are inherent in the imagery.


Glow:
The joy of childhood is stolen by the realities of oppression as realization comes with growth. Similarities to 'Egg' are noted.


Mistress:
McGuiness again takes us back to his days at sea. Sometimes the sea is a metaphor for drunkenness (Waves), but not here. It is a massive life force. The poet is on night watch looking forward at the bow. The sea is his love - or is it Caitlin again? With McGuiness, it isn't clear - nor is it meant to be. He equates her with the natural essence of the good in life.


Crown:
Ireland wears a crown of thorns. The rubies - red blood from the thorns cutting the flesh - are derived of both the oppressor and those who readily acquiesce to
oppression. By waiving and holding out to hope without active self determination - maybe they'll just go away - the populace lacks vision. Moses' horns - divinely inspired insight as depicted on DaVinci's Moses.


Fertile Garden:
The fertile state of Ireland is plowed under year by year. McGuiness supposes that the fertility of the ever enriched but never harvested field grows immensely. When it does bloom, the flower will be spectacular, he asserts.


Egg:
Interesting idea. The life force incubates in a sterile protective shell bathed in the ills of the outside. The attainment of completion of self requires exposure to potential harm.

Notice the joining of twos. Biologically, the embryo is a joining of two progenitors, sperm & egg, father and mother lines.

Psychologically, morally, a child's mind is formed from the early guidance of two parents, father and mother lines.

Early perfection, or potential of perfection, yeilds as growth requires maturation and that in turn requires interaction with the complexities of the real and outside world. The maturation of mind requires shedding many early absolute truths.


Sky:
The two sides of nature, beautiful and nurturing versus random and destructive. In the contrasts he sees his good side as a reflection of the memory of Caitlin as the sound (the bay) reflects a beautiful sky. The dark side is his own innate being. He sees that side cyclically tamed by the gentler force.


Let Sail:
Poets recreate ancient shores and thus keep them historically alive. Helen of Troy is, thus, saved immediately by a fleet of one thousand ships (historically actually 1301 ships) and then ultimately more permanently by a poet's art.

McGuiness cannot lay claim to a fleet of ships nor any tool to bring the physical Caitlin back. He can command a fleet of words and images (his axe, as he frequently refers to it, which he lets sail) to preserve her memory.

Imagery of bloody hatchet swinging is a metaphor for incisive and historically powerful correction of lies. Historic condemnation is as close as Gavin can get to a judgment day, not depending on the celestial to right the wrongs.


Lilies :
Overtly, a cemetery - place of the dead - inhabited by flowers, usually cut and placed rootless. Better, and more broadly, a psyche, not of death, but fallow. Lilies can actually grow here. Rebirth. The choice of the Lily, symbol of the Easter Rebellion, needs exploration.


Towers Fall :
Constructed of symmetric modules, as a tower, the poem doesn't merely rhyme but nearly superimposes whole segments - word for word.

Towers fall. Beliefs fall. Strong attachments, foundations, persist.



Judges :
With each new attack on their city, the republic Romans repelled, then further advanced their defenses until they had - defensively - become the most powerful military power. A people being shaped by their enemies is the key observation. It has implications.


Ripples :
Memory and fantasy viewed as reflections in a rippled (distorted) mirror which grows less and less clear with exhaustion. But character has many mirrors and cannot be ignored.


Ash :
In the shape of an urn. What is the ash?


Squares :
To castle is a chess move, allowed once under certain circumstances, to move the king two squares and place a castle where the king was. It is typically a bail out move in a circumstance of danger. It could be used to protect a queen as well, by placing the castle where the queen is protected, the king being, otherwise, in the way.


Adrift :
McGuiness rejects empty 'love and peace' gestures as the veneer of apathy or cowardice.


Excalibur :
Sometimes, in order to progress or be better, you must take a stand. Not all paths go somewhere. They may end at their vanishing points along with those who take these paths. Stop. Take a stand.


Clann na Gael :
A political organization. Mentions : Jesse Helms. Ian Paisley. Go on. Hit the books.


Mist :
The recurring phrase 'Beauty of the sea' is customarily spoken by a second speaker or chorus. The effect ought to be that of rhythmic rolling and breaking waves, in hushed tones.


Cousins :
Well, it is not subtle that McGuiness puts his name's derivation into so many of his poems. It might be fun to actually do a tally. McGuinness, the usual spelling, is derived from Magennis which a name structure derived from the phrase 'Mag Aonghusa', meaning 'One Choice'.

Confusing in the derivation is the family variation MacInnes and the even nearer MacGinnis. This places an even older origin in Scotland as 'Son of Angus'. This being - probably - the oldest traceable Gaelic name, perhaps only rivaled by Donald.

McGuiness has it both ways in his frequent allowance for Scottish linkage. The hurtful use of Scots against the Irish is dismissed as a fluke of domination, unnatural.

Through all of the, easily16, variations of the name, the oddest quirk was the missing 'n'. Well, wouldn't you know that it was as symbolic as the 'F.E.' in his pen name.


My Wicklow :
A well known place of pastoral beauty in mountains and glens, as well as literary significance contrasted with street riots. Poet is trying to fend off reality - riots outside in the streets - with pillows over his head. Conjured visions of the poetic Wicklow mountains eventually fail.


Ivory Child :
Ivory = pale = dead. Body akimbo likened to the Nazi symbol.


Underworld :
Although there are many unrhymed and free meter McGuiness poems around, nearly all are either the Gaelige originals or translations of McGuiness poems by others. We know of no Gaelige original for this work. It may be the 'American' writing closest in mood and flow to his earlier native poetry.


Streets :
I suspect that this was a working fragment to be spliced or divided up into 'Cousins'. There are many such examples, in Gaelige, of poem fragments, somewhat modified or attenuated , that on casual reading seem to derive from larger works. Yet, they are more primitive and of lesser mastery than in the larger work. Most students, whose work is aimed at sequential dating, confirm that these lesser pieces are works in progress, perhaps notes or work-ups that escaped.


Birds :
Obvious metaphor. Rushing river flow as time and fate with poor old Gavin washed along, helpless. But birds are immune to such directionality. They fly up stream or suspend on air streams as they please.

That is too easy. Note that McGuiness does not say that birds, per se, alone, can do this. They are examples of beings of 'fitting form'. It is the form that one chooses to assume that determines defiance of fate. Again, one choice. Put this one in the tally.


Canyon :
A canyon is made of what isn't there. The Grand Canyon represents a massive hole, a loss of substance. Where did it go?


Flag :
Clearly not a noun, a verb. A people, if they keep their culture alive, can outlive tyranny. The English know this very well. That is why they so severely impress their
culture onto their subjects. It isn't pride. It is a form of genocide.

For example, Irish children baptized as Eamon must be registered as James and so called in school. That is inexplicable in any other frame of reference. It is an enforced and systematic erasure of the roots of a culture, an attack against ethnic resurgence. The origin of the phrase 'ethnic cleansing' as well as the phrase 'final solution' derive from the vocabulary of Irish domination.


Lake :
Author unable to see the beauty of nature devoid of his own nature which he lost with Caitlin.


Iamb :
If you can't figure this one out, you flunk!!!

And, yes, it DOES have meaning!


Well OK, here is one of the morning (a-session) interpretations that got an `A', (Courtney Boucicault - yes, related to the playwright) :

An iamb is, as you well know, a two syllable sound pair in which the first is an unaccented lower sound and the second the more dominant, as in: ka-boom, sha-zam, de-fend, re-treat, o-press and so on. The word `iamb' is an iamb. Therefore in iambic monometer (one iamb to a line),

  i-amb.
  there-fore :
  think I
`I think, therefore, I am.' - backwards. Cute. But deep?

As iambic monometer, this reversal of the usual order fits the bill, whereas the familiar forward `I think' would be a trochee, accent-unaccented.

But McGuiness is about second meanings, always. The roots of the meter terms are telling. As `iamb' means to `assail' to `attack' and `trochee' means `run', it is not surprising that McGuiness elects to attack.

Secondly, McGuiness never questions his own existence nor would he allow anyone else to question his right to exist. He exhorts others to likewise:

` Think I '.

An instruction to others to think of `I', that is of their own self worth.

Whereas, the original forward form is a philosophic argument structured to answer a posed question, Do we exist?, McGuiness lashes out with an alternative:

If you want to prove your own existence by the experience of pain or possibly lose it, then dare to question my existence - or threaten it. I exist and don't forget it. I am. Therefore, you think before you question my existence.

I am. He exists. For that reason, and that reason alone, he thinks. An up front, first order of business, biblical quote of God :

I am.

I am. A given. A Jeffersonian truth self evident with a poetical second layer, Iamb. Monometer. `One measure'. One choice. McGuiness.

 
Opprobrium :
Coffles are lines of people tied together, as in slave chains or chain gangs. Tallies are taxes. Talents are taken offerings (taxes seen from the other side).

Manus e nubibus is Latin for hand from the clouds. Does this line imply that heaven is shackled by hopelessness which generates apathy? This would be akin to the concept that only the ready are lucky.


Scholars :
McGuiness's Gaelige works are laced with Latin. These last several poems more
closely capture that ancient reflection than the many others. There are many Roman symbolisms as well (Moses's Horns, for example). You cannot discuss this poem without reading and fully digesting the poem by Yeats that is clearly referenced here. Amantes - lovers, amentes - lunatics. The idea, it seems, is not so much to be Latin as to be anchored in old basics, time tested moralities. Another anchor. Anchor of the past. A stability of thought and reason. One choice? Mmm?

Well, maybe. Maybe not.


Cracks :
Eye candy. Cute. But `Hostage of gravity' ? There is a kind of black hole feeling to this poem. No? What is at the center of a black hole, hmmm? Yup. Unity. One-ness. McGuiness.


White Horse :
A very special potato failed in the years 1845+. It was the `white' or `horse' potato. A British salve without salvation was soup in the form of flavored water made aromatic with cheap herbs. The recipe for the supposed hunger fooling broth was dispersed to the many work houses (poor houses wherein it was intended that the facilities, work and services be so odious that the lazy Irish would be disinclined to utilize the services).

The Greek god Nyx had two children (twins), Somnos (dream) and the winged Thanatos (death) who carried a burnt out torch.


Sunt Lacrimae Rerum :
Publilius Syrus, a Roman writer, was a favorite and contemporary of Julius Caesar. One of his many one-liners of pithy wisdom probably seeds this poem. `Cruelty feasts on tears' is to be found approximately one half century BC in Crudelis lacrimis pascitur non frangitur., or `Cruelty is fed, not broken, by tears.'. The actual Latin phrase `Sunt Lacrimae Rerum', however, is from Virgil = There are tears (about things).


Landscapes :
Pastoral images, of bog fauna and such require the language of both the artist and the naturalist. The rich variety is once again transformed into singleness, She comes to me. Professor Synge adds the following nature facts :

Curlew - a large bog bird with a very long thin turned down beak and an embracing bobbling song.


Kestrel - A bog eagle-like bird that hovers to catch small prey, including rodents and dragon flies.

Chaser - Four Spotted Chaser - a bog dragon fly noted forvery fast bullet straight flight to overtake bugs for food.

Emperor Moth - A red and brown winged bog butterfly.

Ling - dainty red flowering heather common to the bog.

Asphodel - a dense carpet growing yellow flowered bog plant.

Bladderwort - A group of plants, some bog growers, which trap and digest insects.

Sundew - Bog plant, flowers like sun bursts, trap insects for food.


Cotton Grass - large tufts of snow white cotton-like hang. Groups of such plants can suggest clouds from a distance.

Ragged Robin - A delicate red flower seen in or near hedgerows.

Note the interplay of beauty and choices of predatory species!

This is a bit of a contrast with Waken, which is also a conjuring of nature, but the selection is less threatening. Fox, martin are clear enough. Rape is a relative of cabbage which grows in large fields which, in season, are golden yellow. Sheep are often grazed on this plant. Hart's tongue is a plant and MaidenHair a spreading ground clinging growth which is soft and curly. Nox's cape is clearly the shadow of sunset.


Waken :
Fox, a roaming beast. Martin, a bird. Hart's Tongue a common plant in the burren. MaidenHair a ground cover with curly spiral character. Rape looks, when in blood, like stretches of golden rod. All these are burren fauna. But the names are selective for their tone poem sounds and alternate subliminal qualities. Foxy. Tongue tattle. Maiden's hair. Rape.

Consider the burren as a mind refuge where you go to get away from pressing realities. As you would in a burren, attention is distracted by what is seen and that which is compelling. The stress reduction of day dream can be considered the heaven's side of hell (reality).

As day dream (distraction) yeilds to sleepyness (darkness) which is the absence of connection, dream - sleep dream the projection of hope - provides the place to conjure alternatives rather than just lull in distraction. Dream of all as well. ?

Dream of all - as well?
Dream of : All as well?  Probably both. Dream as heaven's lathe allows the consideration of alternatives. It is through the conception of alternatives that change for the better is born.


To Hell or Connacht :
The official reply to the plea Where will all those starving people go?, was, Let them go to Hell or Connacht. Connacht was, at that time, a barren and impossible place to exist, regarded as a useless hell hole by the official British. This is yet another in the long list of clearly genocidal quotes from ruling Britain.


Famine Ships:
There must have been much angst in the old wooden ship sailing days. So many
sayings reflect those fears. McGuiness adds to the most familiar.

The devil to pay., is the modern corruption of, The devil to paye and no pitch hot.
Pitch is tar. Paye is a verb akin to pave, as in to apply tar, but not on a surface,
rather into cracks for sealing.

The single long wooden member that is the spine of the wooden ship, from which all cross supports diverge, and which is the very lowermost edge of the ship in the water was called the `devil'. It was so called because it was not accessible at sea, being covered by flooring. If it leaked then the sailors were, between the devil and the deep blue sea.

An alternate form of ship building, distinctively Irish, was the stretching of animal skins over wicker basket-like frames forming boats called `currachs' and `hookers'.


Apollogia :
Apologia is the correct spelling, yet this spelling, with license, is better, given obvious references to Apollo, Daphne and the Pythian games. Boreas also had a difficult catch, but fared better. Cupid had two kinds of arrows. The sharp golden tipped brought love, the dull lead tipped arrows brought aversion. The oak was a very important, actually the most important, druidical icon. The oak, having very deep roots and a very conductive physiology, draws lightening. It gets hit and distorts from the damage. It was viewed as a conduit to the gods who adorned it with mistletoe, mistletoe, a flowering plant that magically grows in thin air.


Regeneration :
A poem of genesis. Professor Synge to the rescue, again. In context of a theme
of genesis, from the chaos, gods springs forth :

Fios - god of intellect.
Eolus - god of knowledge.
Fochmare - god of enquiry

In Finite :
Philosophy of India. The cosmos and creation as an infinite net of gems. In each gem can be seen the reflection of all the others, an infinity of infinities. But, what if in one stone is seen an edge, an end, a terminus? Does that imply an infinity of finiteness? Does it suggest that there are ends? McGuiness sees his own incompleteness as a rift in infinity that damns infinity to the finite.


Assent :
Assent, accede?   Or ascent, to rise?   Or most likely, both?

What a song-like poem! McGuiness hints that. There is a building power rising from retrospection to a charge leveled at God.

The obvious question is given a default answer, Yes, there is life after death. But the real question is more McGuiness, deep and dark. He asks, Is God good enough for Caitlin? There is no argument over power. Is our God a loving being or more like those that ancients believed in, arbitrary, vein - to be feared?


Ring :
The Ring of Kerry traveled in a horse drawn rig starting at Killarney, where such
jarveys are rather popular. Nearly back again, one passes through Kenmare where a well known Druid's Circle exists (there are others).


Untilled :
Again, double meaning. 1) Not planted or 2) Told wait until such and such over and over again. Both apply.


Busts :
The statutes of Kilkenny forbade English traveling or living in Ireland to act like Irish or use any Irish mannerisms or language. Seriously. The heritage of written codes which line the halls of history are the proof of the assertion that the English formally attempted cultural genocide on the Irish. The rule were ignored and therefore were busts. Yes, another double meaning.


Breath :
The steam seen during exhale in winter is likened to steam of held back tears boiling in rage. Keening is an ancient Irish practice of wailing at a funeral.

Crack :
This may be the flip side to the Hindu gem-net construction wherein infinity is not merely flawed but an illusion altogether. The infinity, here, may be many things. It isn't clear. However, one student hypothesis is that it represents English power which tries to magnify itself through myriads of devices or quasi-legal contrivances.

Depression often magnifies adversity. There is a general lesson here.


Manx :
I don't think that the cat of this name is even remotely alluded to, despite one very long essay by a student (who flunked).

Where does one begin with this one? Well, that's why we have students, to torment them with poems such as this. I love this poem! It has so many cross currents.

First, the obvious. Manx is a term that denotes `of the Isle of Man' in the Irish sea. Isle of Man has broad linguistic appeal as in `mankind'. It also refers to the native language, or what is also called Gaelige. So it connotes a form of speech. This sits subliminally in the poem by way of aural approximation (another example of aural approximation is `ship reckonings').
    
But the bird called `Manx Shearwater' is clearly the metaphor embodiment of flight. Not just flying but flight as in to flee. This bird, colored like a penguin, glides on wind currents - particularly on the west coast of Ireland and is seen at the Cliffs of Moher. But it also is the one Irish inhabitant that flies to America and eventually returns. Clearly, this is the flight of the poem.

Famine ships left Cobh (pronounced cove) where a church on the hill adjacent that harbor was the last thing seen as the ships went seaward south then westward. That church has an immensely tall narrow steeple. It is the last thing seen before just sea. This is what the Irish immigrants retell, the eclipse of that steeple. The beginning of emptiness.

The Manx flying a parallel route takes pity and appeals to God on their behalf. But this is a trip on `ruah', the biblical breath of God. In the same context is the reference to that one place where God is to be found - not in whirlwinds, nor earthquakes, nor floods but in the `small still voice'. The small still voice is a very clear biblical term for the voice and presence of God. Many interpret it as meaning that God is not found in external things but in a small still voice - or inner voice - conscience.

A deep abiding faith is the brace to the external forces. The bird messenger of God news as Holy Ghost or Noah's bird of landfall or any and all of several bird - water stories all come together in this poem. The clues are clear. By the way, Clear is an island just before the Fastnet lighthouse - last island before the deep Atlantic thence to the Americas.

White Martyrs are exiles, often religious order related, whose isolation is that not that of isolation in a deserted place but within the confines of a foreign people. So what story do they tell in that new place? What of their great fall from their native land? Nothing. Silence.

The `great silence' is a term for the absolutely fascinating failure of the Irish to commemorate and acknowledge the horror of the famine and the deeds which compounded it. Unlike Jews whose reaction was `never again' and whose long tradition is recollection of their history as a people - good or bad - the Irish have acquired a mass amnesia. It has taken a brigade of historians to even begin to ferret the bounds of the events that ought, by way of the recent times, be fresh in the minds of all.

Interestingly, Irish Americans get more steamed over this history than the native Irish who seem to want to keep it out of mind. In a very real way, the American voice of McGuiness is appropriate as Irish poets are notable in their evasion of this topic. There is this giant hole in the subject matter of most current and near current Irish poets. It is that of the missing reference to English dominion. McGuiness stands out in contrast.


Hand :
A recurring theme, his departed love is ever young. `Fault of wonder never weaned', that is, an idea, a fear, caused by empty speculation which begets no resolution or truth - If I do go to heaven, will I be old and she as young as then?

In this poem a child's hand, her hand, beckons him to repent so as to qualify for
heaven and join her. But can he relate to her as the child she was? Dante had a
problem of similar construct. Can you relate them?

DaneLaw :
This was one of my favorites for some time. The reason was in the rustic feel of the language. There is a simple theme played out, to be sure, but the language engages in a very primitive way.

It was then pointed out to me, by a colleague in the languages department, that this poem was in fact a puzzle. I don't mean puzzling, deep, or mystical. I mean that it is a puzzle as might belong in a puzzle book for word junkies.

The theme is easy enough. Rugged home spun law as might be found in remote
populations which lack written formulated organized structures may well be overly severe as it lacks methods of temperance. Transgressions lead to personal action which has no specific cut off. Vendetta, for example, would not have a two week community service option.

The only check on the thrift law of personal action is public reaction. An overly harsh response to an infringement may well make the transgressor a sympathetic figure.

In the poem a wife, we assume, gets a bit of side action and suffers thrifty rugged law.

But the puzzle? The entire poem has a very strong under-structure. There is an
entirely cohesive and distinct second thing going on. Do you see it? If you do, don't tell anybody. Let them work it out. One hint. An advanced dictionary could be very useful.

Distemper:
A distemper is a white on white artistic rendering or a prepainting wash of white. Clouds are seen as a distemper to the imagination. Also notice that rhyme, which is strong in McGuiness poetry, is nearly absent. Instead we find paraphony - which is a suggestive equivalency of sound without exactitude. Angst that may be conjured up from forced recognition brought forth by images - clouds - twisted into icons of suppressed realities or fears. But those images and what we make of them or do because of them are still clouds which only reflect our own cloudy thinking. Clouds are mental mirrors. All white until we color them.