'Will You Taste Some Irishness?'

In 2003 around St. Patricks Day I started a thread on Irish poetry (entitled 'Will You Taste Some Irishness?') on the New York Times sponsored (and now defunct) abuzzdotcom. In the days leading up to March 17th I posted, each day, a poem by a different Irish poet.

When the NYT shut down that site, I continued the thread annually for four more years on Able2knowdotcom.

This annual enterprise was my response to the 'dumbing down' of Ireland and things Irish. (To too many people in this country, the word 'Irish' produces an instant association to green beer, drunken partying, and cardboard leprechauns).

The fact of doing those annual threads introduced me to a host of wonderful poets that I had not previously read, and turned me from a casual reader of a few Irish poets into an full fledged enthusiast.

To inaugurate the thread, I began with a little introductory poem of my own (below):



'Will You Taste Some Irishness?'


Will you taste some Irishness
in lieu of greenish beer?
Please sip of Heaney, Yeats, and Joyce,
Their verses are served here.

Draughts of loss and sadness too,
The Irish poets bring;
And yet...the tears a beauty make,
--A strange transfiguring.

Will you taste some Irishness
in lieu of greenish beer?
Please savor sorrow, pain, and pride,
and ancient flavors queer;

A trace of moon, and mist, and sea,
A poteen brewed of tears;
Of turf, and toil, and hate, and strife,
And love of country fierce.

Clarke, and Durcan, Kavanagh,
Are offered here to you,
Fallon, Boland, Hartigan,
O'Grady, Montague.

Drink, long and deep of Irishness,
It seeks the deepest part,
It curls around your human-ness,
And seeps into your heart.

-jorge999