This biography covers all of this Irish poet's life and career. The subtitle may lead one to believe it's only about the period roughly from 1975-84 when Michael Hartnett's decision to no longer publish his poetry in English gained attention among Ireland's poetry, literary, and critical circles. But the tenth of the book devoted to this phase shows its importance and duration within the poet's 58 years.
Pat Walsh must have read everything ever mentioning Hartnett. His documentation records his consultation of the poet's manuscripts and notebooks, interviews, and press coverage down to quite rare small press publications or ephemeral journalism. He lets the poetry, the poet, and his contemporaries tell as much of the story as possible. Generous excerpts from Hartnett's verses, his own writings beyond poems, and his radio broadcasts also deepen any reader's appreciation of his work. Furthermore, while Walsh tends to stay in the background more as diligent compiler than as a critic with his own take on this difficult-to-categorize man, he judiciously includes criticism which calls Hartnett to task when warranted. For not all of his verses are up to the high standards of his best.
Complementing literary criticism produced on Hartnett, this fuller depiction of a dapper, erudite, coruscating, and forthright poet and presence during the 60s through some of the 80s reveals a deep care for the state of Ireland, regarding its heritage, its commitment or lack of to its long-denigrated "first official language," and Hartnett's determination to demonstrate by his own action his nuanced understanding of not only a language but a way of life and a manner of living and thinking which, for many in his Dublin audiences hearing him declaim his poems, must have been received with a mixture of reactions. Today when national identity, ethnic roots, international treaties, and corporate domination have markedly increased since Hartnett's era, this 2012 study is timely and trenchant. (Amazon Britain + US 7/30/17)
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