Woven Shades of Green: An Anthology of Irish Nature Literature ed. by Tim Wenzell (review)

This is a generous and inclusive anthology, focusing mainly on poetry but open also to significant pieces of prose. We encounter familiar extracts, generous selections from early Irish literature—the “Deer’s Cry,” St. Columcille’s poem about Iona, anonymous lyrics such as “The Blackbird of Belfast Lough,” and the whole of “Buile Suibhne,” a welcome choice. The Suibhne passages recall the vivid harshness of the portrait and remind us how deeply ingrained in Irish tradition was the figure of the homeless man, struggling to survive in harsh conditions and circumstances:

Alas, O woman!thou wilt not go the way that I shall go;I abroad in the tree-topsthou yonder in a friend’s house.Alas, O woman!cold is the wind that has come to me;nor mother nor son has pity on me,no cloak is on my breast.

The Suibhne section is followed by work from the nineteenth-century poets William Allingham and James Clarence Mangan; a prose piece by Thomas Gainsford, “Description of Ireland, 1618”; and William Drummond’s unsuccessful description in rhyming couplets of The Giant’s Causeway. The Irish Literary Revival section has a rich display of nature poetry by Katharine Tynan, George Russell, W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, and others. It is a pleasure to come across Synge’s work, with its sturdy rhymes and down-to-earth language. The value of the inclusive approach is evident in the vivid style of the excerpt from his reflections on the Aran Islands. A passage from George Moore’s lovely, atmospheric The Lake that underlines his sensitive ear for lyrical prose is also justified.

Then comes Irish poetry of the twentieth century, beginning with Patrick Kavanagh. His work immediately stands out by virtue of the individuality of such poems as “Canal Bank Walk” and “Inniskeen Road on a July Evening,” where the quality of the language is outstanding. He is followed by Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, John Montague, and Michael Longley but also Desmond Egan, Mary O’Malley, and Rosemarie Rowley.

This section pays off with work by John Tyndall, a prominent physicist, writing both as a scientist and as a humanist in his “Belfast Address,” followed by generous extracts by Lloyd Praeger from The Way That I Went, wherein he works from a close personal relationship with the landscape. It is exciting to see our contemporaries Michael Viney and John Moriarty included here. Viney, a well-known newspaper columnist, is represented by extracts from his book, A Year’s Turning. The selections from philosopher Moriarty’s book, Invoking Ireland, support his central thesis that Ireland has taken a wrong turn and needs to pay more attention to the natural world. The cartographer Tim Robinson has produced maps of the west of Ireland and has published a three-volume study of Connemara that is an investigation of the natural world. The engagement by these writers shows a valuable addition to the literature of the natural world.