Collected Poems

Richard Murphy emerged in the 1950s with John Montague and Thomas Kinsella as one of the three major poets in the new Irish poetic renaissance. His second volume Sailing to an Island, which was a Poetry Book Society Choice, was followed by The Battle of Aughrim, widely acclaimed as one of the most powerful historical narratives of the twentieth century. Although the next volumes range from his signature setting of the grey stone and surging sea of Ireland’s western islands to vivid Eastern settings, they offer a renewed lyricism, in the poignant narrative and descriptive poems of High Island, the colorful psychological portrayals of childhood in Ceylon, and the sonnet sequence that comprises The Price of Stone. Playfully and candidly, this later work gives voice to structures as varied as Kylemore Castle, a tinker’s wattle tent, Nelson’s Pillar, and a beehive cell in which a woman gives birth alone on High Island. The Collected Poems is a major achievement, not only because on page after page it reveals poetry of exceptional insight and passion, but also because it brings into focus the wide poetic range?geographical, formal, and tonal?of which Richard Murphy is master.