Dissing the poets

I run the risk of being 'flamed' by any Irish readers out there for the slighting remark in my last post on their exalted poet Patrick Kavanagh.

But I find from the Wikipedia article on Kavanagh that my great literary (and boozing) hero, Brian O'Nolan (also known as Flann O'Brien, the nom de plume under which most of his books were published, and Myles na Gopaleen, the comic alias under which he wrote a long-running humorous column in the Irish Times called 'The Cruiskeen Lawn'; I have commemorated him on my other blog Barstool Blues as one of my 'Unsuitable Role Models', here and here, and he has earned at least one previous mention on Froogville, here) did a much better job of denigrating him.

As it says in the Wikipedia entry:

Arriving in Dublin in the late 1930s, Kavanagh often found his rural mannerisms and imagery the subject of mockery by the city's literary community. When the Irish Times published an early Kavanagh poem, "Spraying the Potatoes", Myles na Gopaleen responded caustically:

"I am no judge of poetry - the only poem I ever wrote was produced when I was body and soul in the gilded harness of Dame Laudanum - but I think Mr Kavanaugh [sic] is on the right track here. Perhaps the Irish Times, timeless champion of our peasantry, will oblige us with a series in this strain covering such rural complexities as inflamed goat-udders, warble-pocked shorthorn, contagious abortion, non-ovoid oviducts, and nervous disorders among the gentlemen who pay the rent."
[This last expression was a common Irish euphemism for a pig.]