Book contents
- Samuel Beckett’s Poetry
- Samuel Beckett’s Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chronology of Samuel Beckett’s Poetry
- Chapter 1 Weirdness and Dislocation in Beckett’s Early Poetry
- Chapter 2 Whole Fragments
- Chapter 3 Pre-echoing the Bones
- Chapter 4 ‘The Nucleus of a Living Poetic’
- Chapter 5 Beckett Growing Gnomic
- Chapter 6 Gender, Pronoun and Subject in ‘Poèmes 1937–1939’
- Chapter 7 The Missing Poème
- Chapter 8 Romanticism and Beckett’s Poetry
- 9 Romance under Strain in ‘Cascando’
- Chapter 10 Samuel Beckett’s Self-Translated Poems
- Chapter 11 Samuel Beckett’s Translations of Mexican Poetry
- Chapter 12 Beckett’s Poetry and the Radical Absence of the (War) Dead
- Chapter 13 Beckett’s Sound Sense
- Chapter 14 The Matter of Absence
- Chapter 15 ‘Mocked by a Tissue That May Not Serve’
- Chapter 16 Invoking Beckett
- Index
Chapter 16 - Invoking Beckett
Samuel Beckett’s Legacy in Northern Irish Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2022
- Samuel Beckett’s Poetry
- Samuel Beckett’s Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chronology of Samuel Beckett’s Poetry
- Chapter 1 Weirdness and Dislocation in Beckett’s Early Poetry
- Chapter 2 Whole Fragments
- Chapter 3 Pre-echoing the Bones
- Chapter 4 ‘The Nucleus of a Living Poetic’
- Chapter 5 Beckett Growing Gnomic
- Chapter 6 Gender, Pronoun and Subject in ‘Poèmes 1937–1939’
- Chapter 7 The Missing Poème
- Chapter 8 Romanticism and Beckett’s Poetry
- 9 Romance under Strain in ‘Cascando’
- Chapter 10 Samuel Beckett’s Self-Translated Poems
- Chapter 11 Samuel Beckett’s Translations of Mexican Poetry
- Chapter 12 Beckett’s Poetry and the Radical Absence of the (War) Dead
- Chapter 13 Beckett’s Sound Sense
- Chapter 14 The Matter of Absence
- Chapter 15 ‘Mocked by a Tissue That May Not Serve’
- Chapter 16 Invoking Beckett
- Index
Summary
Contemporary Northern Irish poets have repeatedly, even obsessively, invoked Samuel Beckett’s name in their work, from Paul Muldoon’s mock-heroic ‘His Nibs Sam Bethicket’ and Derek Mahon’s ‘Beckett’s bleak reductio’, through Leontia Flynn’s grotesque blazon of Beckett’s ‘palpitations, panic attacks, diarrhoea’ and Padraic Fiacc’s assurance that ‘Beckett welcomes you to Paris’, to Howard’s Wright’s foul-mouthed ‘Beckett in Belfast’. While Beckett’s more generalised influence on the lyrical form and language of contemporary poets has received some scholarly attention, the act of invocation more specifically has been less fully explored, particularly within an explicitly Northern Irish context. To ‘invoke’ – to call by name, to appeal to for witness or aid, to utter as a sacred name, or to summon in prayer – is a performative gesture, drawing Beckett’s presence into dynamic interaction with the poem itself. This chapter will explore precisely what force these poems seek to summon by invoking Beckett’s name.
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- Samuel Beckett's Poetry , pp. 250 - 266Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022