A breathtaking collection of Irish poets' expressions of love―from heartfelt professions to whimsical flirtations―across history. All poets share a common to define, to memorialize, and never to exhaust the subject of love. Ireland's Love Poems highlights one country's extraordinary poetic tradition, in both the English and Irish languages, by male and female poets, both ancient and modern. Emotions of every kind are embodied in this celebration of love's pleasures and pains, in forms ranging from complex ancient Irish ballads to forthright contemporary feminist verse. These poems consider romance in all its from the thrills of young love to the commitments of marriage, from grief to amorous rebirth, from affection to idolatry. The result is a cumulative portrait of love that mirrors Irish history in its complexity. Included in this diverse selection are Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J. M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas Kinsella, Eavan Boland, Seamus Heaney, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.
Author
Alexander Norman Jeffares, AM was an Irish literary scholar. Jeffares was educated at Dublin High School, Trinity College, Dublin and Oriel College, Oxford. He took up his first academic appointment at the University of Groningen in 1947 and then moved to the University of Edinburgh in 1948. At the very early age of 30 he was then appointed to the Jury Chair of English at the University of Adelaide where he stayed for 17 years. He then returned to the Chair of English at the University of Leeds before finally moving to the University of Stirling in 1974. He retired as Emeritus Professor of English in 1985.
