Comments on: From the Irish

By: Mrs Tilton

Mrs Tilton — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 22:38:28 +0000

Jack, you seem to be having trouble with Kieran’s statement that ‘it’s St Patrick’s day and he’s thinking of terrorism’. Apparently you read this as indicating that the first item to pop into Kieran’s head upon any mention of anything remotely Irish is terrorism. Physician, heal thyself. Whilst I am not a mindreader, I think it’s clear enough what was behind Kieran’s post. It’s not what you’re assuming at all. Let me help you: 1. He wrote ‘It’s St Patrick’s Day’ because it was, well, St Patrick’s Day. 2. He was thinking about terrorism because there’d just been a very nasty example of it; perhaps you read about it in the Post. Multitasking, old son; multitasking and synthesis. They’re beautiful things. See if you can’t pick up the trick yourself.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 20:18:20 +0000

Don’t need a psychologist—you just have to have seen St. Patrick’s Day from more than one country’s angle. Or perhaps just to be a bit more aware of history. From a purely logical standpoint, I can see a progression: St. Paddy’s to big holiday for Irish (and Irish wannabe) Americans to Irish pubs to Noraid collections to contributions to the IRA. Because we’re freeing the motherland from the hands of the English tyrant.

By: JackNYC

JackNYC — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 18:09:01 +0000

“It’s St Patrick’s Day, and I’m thinking about terrorism.” So, Kieran’s from Cork and Henry’s “upbringing is a mixture of Tipperary and Dublin” (WTF?)…..and over here Clarence Thomas is a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. (Just to give you guys something to shoot for) “It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and I’m thinking about gangsta’s” I’m done. Get a psychologist to explain it to you.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 03:56:44 +0000

Perhaps this site as a whole requires a prominent irony warning. In the lobby outside a performance of Carmen in Southern California a few years ago there was a prominent sign warning of cigarette smoking during the first act and a gun being fired in the second. These days you can’t be too careful.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 22:26:22 +0000

1) Surely poetry, even devastating poetry, is as much a part of being Irish as green beer? As is the recent history of the country. I’m less shamefully ignorant about it than I was a year ago, but I didn’t know what “proxy bombs” were until this thread. My God. 2) We’ve got some St. Patrick’s day-related and terrorism-related poems going here, though not both at the same time.

By: Henry

Henry — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 21:29:13 +0000

You appear not to understand that Mrs. Tilton (herself a Gaelgeoir) is using the phrase ‘somewhat’ as a class of a sarcastic understatement. Kieran is as Irish as being born and raised in Cork can make you. As someone who’s also ‘somewhat’ Irish – my upbringing is a mixture of Tipperary and Dublin – I didn’t see anything in the least bit inappropriate in Kieran’s post. I do however see plenty that’s inappropriate in the beer-sodden ‘wrap the Green flag round me and up the ‘RA’ ersatz patriotism that some Irish-Americans see as the appropriate way of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Your bizarre statement that Kieran’s post constitutes ‘pathological hatred of all things Irish’ suggests that you adhere to a definition of Irishness that I, and most other real, actual Irish people, find to be embarrassing. But then that’s never especially bothered your like in the past.

By: jackNYC

jackNYC — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 20:57:37 +0000

“somewhat Irish” is that like somewhat pregnant? Would you be fine, rose pinned to your jacket and all, with Kieran choosing April 23rd to post a poem by Benjamin Zephaniah extolling the virtue (sarcasm) of empire? Would the taste of his timing go unquestioned? I cheer for no blood spilled, across any ocean.

By: Mrs Tilton

Mrs Tilton — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 20:05:36 +0000

You’ll find that the fellow who posted this thread and the fellow who wrote the poem are somewhat Irish themselves. And I should think hatred of what’s described in the poem—which ought to run deep through every society—is anything but pathological. Can’t say the same of the ‘vols’, or those who cheer them on from across the Atlantic.

By: jackNYC

jackNYC — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 19:57:33 +0000

Interesting juxtaposition, the poem/the day. Revealing, as are some of the comments. Does this pathological hatred of things Irish run through your society as a whole, or merely certain segments?

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 18:28:47 +0000

I used to work in an Irish pub—the people who gave to Noraid there knew damned well their money was going to fund the IRA. You know, I loved that place. I even used to love going out on St. Paddy’s (Patty is a grrl), but you’d never catch me drinking green beer. But I have to agree that your basic Irish-American is pig-ignorant when it comes to the history of Ireland between the Famine and Michael Collins (the movie). For me, perhaps because the spouse worked in The City long ago and was far too close to the location of a bombing, and because there’s still a hulking wreck of a bomb site near my in-laws house in NW London, I don’t see the glamour. I also feel terribly uncomfortable with the fact that Mssrs. Adams and McGinnes (sp?—don’t have time to check—off to give an exam) are spending the day with GW. I expect that nice white ex-terrorists and/or friends of terrorists are exempt from the WOT.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:42:33 +0000

It’s worth pointing out that the style of the poetry is taken from epics such as “The Tain”; it’s a take-off of the description of Cuchulain’s feats in battle.

By: roger

roger — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 16:46:23 +0000

Speaking of Irish poems that are appropriate for this war season St. Pat’s, here’s one from Patrick Kavanaugh: Little men, at work, reconcile me to the great. —-Alfieri Dogs barking. Men with guns. The foul canal, brown-swollen by the rains, Is lined with trigger-happy mothers’ sons. And not one simple man to clear the stinking drains. Above my window cockney-sparrows build … Hard to doubt the gay congruities, Hard to live without complacencies. Things are just as bad as we were told. These busy squatters seem accomplices—- Straw from a beak blurs the page as I write. Out in the street this morning there was a fight. One of the men fell jerking in a fit. I took my watching white-face on my well-shod feet Down to my garden gate. One barefoot watcher looked at me and spat. Well, build from spittle and sparrow-straw bricks for a song! Why, when it is impossible to Belong Do all of us long for that more than anything? Perhaps to write and rhyme a sense of loss Makes one isolation briefly less. Steel-helmets make that seem ridiculous. For us no quasi-romantic State of War: You scarcely notice when you live with fear. If little lights were little one by one Could any of Europe’s bonfires have lasted for long …? But who has words to say all that again? Meanwhile the dogs are barking. Sentries yawn. Someone, somewhere, switches the street-lights on. Domestic sparrows end where they began. We must leave tomorrow to the morning. Perhaps tomorrow we shall wake up grown. For if some bayonet or bomb cuts short the growing, We know that nobody’s better off, and that’s worth knowing. Djakarta, 1958

By: Joshua W. Burton

Joshua W. Burton — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 16:12:17 +0000

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters, with four dead and eleven wounded. And around these, in a larger circle of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered and one graveyard. But the young woman who was buried in the city she came from, at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, enlarges the circle considerably, and the solitary man mourning her death at the distant shores of a country far across the sea includes the entire world in the circle. And I won’t even mention the howl of orphans that reaches up to the throne of God and beyond, making a circle with no end and no God. Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch.

By: GMT

GMT — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:58:25 +0000

1,100 pictures X 1,000 words = this http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=iraq+dead

By: digamma

digamma — Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:28:22 +0000

By the way, I caught everybody’s pal John Derbyshire attempting a sneaky slander against the Republic of Ireland on Monday. Ignorant Irish-Americans have definitely supported terrorism inadvertently through Noraid. I wonder if anyone has done a thorough survey of IRA sympathizers abroad on the left. It was a big surprise to me when I read the liner notes of Rage Against the Machine’s first album and saw them describe Bobby Sands as an inspiration – does a general sympathy for the Catholic side exist among hard left groups around the world? And can similar currents be found among conservative Catholics?