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Life and background
Born in Croom, Co. Limerick in 1941, Michael Hartnett wrote in both English and Irish. Growing up in a home where books and reading were valued, he began writing poetry at age thirteen and by the late fifties was intent on pursuing a literary career.
In 1975, with the collection A Farewell to English, he announced his intention to write only in Irish, but returned to English in the mid-eighties.
His poetry draws from both rural and urban life, celebrating the familiar and the ordinary, and lamenting the positive aspects of Irish culture that have been lost or are in decline. He died in Dublin on October 13th, 1999 at the age of fifty-eight.
Commentary
The poem paints a picture of an old woman at odds with the modern world. Her food is boring and her understanding of the world limited. She holds on to ancient Irish superstitions about "pucas and darkfaced men". To the modern world she is "ignorant" and "pagan" but, despite this, she is fiercely proud. The images of the stone-cold kitchen and her brittle hands suggest her approaching death. The poet says she is "sentenced in the end" to a meagre, isolated existence, holding on to a world that is foreign and incomprehensible to her. It would seem that her beliefs and traditions have no place in the modern world.
In contrast to this bleak image, another picture of the woman is drawn in the last six lines of the poem. This image is of the woman in her youth, vivacious and adventurous, dancing and singing, being present at infamous local incidents and being a part of historical events. The woman, far from being ignorant and boring, seems suddenly interesting and our curiosity about her is evoked.
The poet says that it was only after she died that he began to appreciate the old woman. Only then did he realise that her perceived ignorance and paganism were remnants, however faded, of an Irish culture that was once alive and important.
While Hartnett may have written the poem about a particular woman, it is clear that it also chronicles the death of all that the woman represents - Irish traditions, pastimes, music, language and identity, now relegated, like the old woman, to the realm of "useless things". Through the image of the old woman, Hartnett encourages us to examine our own attitudes to aspects of Irish culture that seem to have no place in the life of modern Ireland.
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