Euripides' "The Bacchae" is an enigmatic play, written late in the author's career, and existing only in one manuscript with a few lacunae. Modern readers (and producers) often interpret it as a proto-hippie propaganda piece: control-freak Pentheus gets his comeuppance from the god of wine and dance, Dionysus. But it's far more complex than that: Dionysus is a force of nature and not a human being, and the revenge he takes on Pentheus' family is (by human standards) cruelly disproportionate to the offense. I've seen the play done as everything from a "Hair"-influenced musical to a flamenco performance (which was surprisingly effective!), and I feel it still hasn't given up all its secrets.
Mahon's rendition is memorable: his language spans a range of tones and emotions, from irony and wry humor to the beautifully expressed choruses and the pathos of the final scene, and this conveys the "feel" of the play far better than the usual all-too-dignified "exact" translations. His anachronisms are annoying at times, and he can't resist the occasional Irish touch (e.g., he uses "ceili" to describe the Maenads' dances). Also, I have doubts about the stageworthiness of his musical suggestions (everything from folk to rock 'n' roll), but he leaves the director a lot of latitude. I feel that Mahon's language would work well on the stage, which isn't true of all poet-playwrights! All in all, this is a well-written work, and a pleasure to read, too.

In his native Ireland, connaisseurs regard Mahon's poetry as superior to Seamus Heaney's, and why Mahon's works are so little known is a mystery to me. Maybe it is because he is not interested in the merely picturesque aspects of Ireland, and also because he has broken free of that country at least outwardly. Finally, there is almost always a sense of impending apocalypse in Mahon's poetry, which some people may feel unable to stomach. As a matter of fact, this poetry reminded my of W.G. Sebald's prose. In both cases a wide learning helps the speaker understand the details of a world gone wrong; both Sebald's and Mahon's works seem to be dominated by a feeling of grief.

Colleagues and critics acknowledge Mahon's rank among the finest poets of our time ("work of the highest order" Seamus Heaney; "real mastery" W.S. Mervin). What matters to me, however, is that he is by far my favorite poet now writing in English.

Of course I would like to quote a few lines now to give you an idea of what Mahon's poetry can do, but Mahon's oeuvre is so rich and diverse that the following verses will inevitably give you a wrong impression. Mahon wrote them in the early seventies, when the so-called "Troubles" had torn apart his native Northern Ireland:

"And I step ashore in a fine rain / To a city so changed / By five years of war / I scarcely recognize / The places I grew up in, / The faces that try to explain. // But the hills are still the same / Grey-blue above Belfast. / Perhaps if I'd stayed behind / And lived it bomb by bomb / I might have grown up at last / And learnt what is meant by home."

A raggle-taggle collection of reviews and essays with no real unifying theme or drive - except a relative interest in matters Irish - this book has nevertheless done that most rare and testing of things in a collection of book reviews - it has persuaded me to buy not one but two of the books under review. Mahon's several pieces on McNeice make that out of fashion figure of interest to the non-Irish and non afficionado. There is a fun profile of Anthony Burgess and much memorabilia of literary youth at Trinity etc. There is everywhere an urbane sense of what the literary life is and how such and such a writer may have come to such or such a bad end or occasional lapse. Solid book reviews which are rewarding to dip into and a civilised, gentle tone throughout. How many essay collections can you say that of?

This is a good book to use in tandem with Muldoon's Faber Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry and Crotty's Modern Irish Poetry for the understanding of contemporary Irish poetry. It allocates its main space to Kinsella, Heaney, Montague, Mahon, Muldoon and Durcan, in that order. Some of the poets may hold the substantial space allotted to them because they were important two and three decades ago, but this anthology nonetheless sparkles in the selections it makes from these poets, and in the inclusion of Deane, Grennan, Mathews and Sirr. The editor Mahon has made an outstanding selection from his own work, and the book is a good introduction to the important, mischievous work of Michael Hartnett. As an anthology it has a unified and valid character all its own in the presentation of contemporary Irish poetry.

This year I am using Jean Racine's "Phaedra" as the one non-classical text in my Classical Greek and Roman Mythology Class (yes, I know, "Classical" makes "Greek and Roman" redundant, but it was not my title). In Greek mythology, Phaedra was the half-sister of the Minotaur who was married to Theseus after the hero abandoned her sister Ariadne (albeit, according to some versions of what happened in Crete). Phaedra fell in love with her step-son Hippolytus, who refused her advances. Humiliated, she falsely accused him of having raped her.

My students read "Phaedra" after Euripides's "Hippolytus" as part of an analogy criticism assignment, in which they compare/contrast the two versions, which are decidedly different, to say the least. In the "original" Greek version Hippolytus is a follower of Artemis, and the jealous Aphrodite causes his stepmother to fall in love with him. Phaedra accuses Hippolytus of rape and then hangs herself; Theseus banished his son who is killed before Artemis arrives to tell the truth. In Racine's version Hippolytus is a famous hater of women who falls in love with Aricia, a princess of the blood line of Athens. When false word comes that Theseus is dead, Phaedra moves to put her own son on the throne. In the end the same characters end up dead, but the motivations and other key elements are different.

While I personally would not go so far as to try and argue how Racine's neo-classical version represents the France of 1677, I have found that comparing and contrasting the two versions compels students to think about the choices each dramatist has made. Both the similarities and the differences between "Hippolytus" and "Phaedra" are significant enough to facilitate this effort. Note: Other dramatic versions of this myth include Seneca's play "Phaedra," "Fedra" by Gabriele D'Annunzio, "Thesee" by Andrea Gide, and "The Cretan Woman" by Robinson Jeffers.

Phillipe Jaccotet has enough of the child like inquisition in all of us and enough of an appeal to the beautiful and romantic, to off set his imaginitive language, his modern sensibilities. I am no poetry expert, but reading the very musical verse of Jaccotet is positively a joy. Of course i didn't like all of the poetry in the book, the later ones seemed dreary. But jaccotet is a genius worth getting to know. I recomend buying this book to all those interested in French poetry in the surrealist or any other tradition.