An Essay on Stony Grey Soil Patrick Kavanaghs poem, Stony Grey Soil, takes a reflective look at a passionately bitter

individuals fruitless life. In essence the narrator laments the potential of happiness stolen from his grasp by his circumstance and has selected his home on which to project his feelings of betrayal. The character that Kavanagh creates absorbs the reader into an unsentimental picture of his life and as an audience we bear full witness to the resentment consuming his soul. The poem maintains a bitter and accusatory tone throughout and establishes itself well in the powerful opening, O stony grey soil of Monaghan. By the first word we are given the impression of a lament; with the narrators initial calling out we assume that feelings of regret or grief will be being dealt with. The word choice of stony and grey introduces the gloomy, pessimistic tone and in the following line the poet uses thieved to convey the narrators bitter sense of being cheated out of happiness. The narrator continues to address the soil of Monaghan directly for the first five stanzas. It becomes personified and reflects the narrators bitter soul. As the soil is repeatedly referred to it is accompanied by the stony grey imagery. It seems to bring connotations of tombstones and this is reflected when the title is repeated in the penultimate line of the poem followed by, Dead loves that were born for me. While the image is questionable it does fit well with the narrator re-examining his life while he awaits death or is possibly even already lying in his grave. Alliteration and rhyme permeate the poem and Kavanagh uses them to maintain the flow and rhythm while highlighting and bringing stress. Significantly, the poet chooses to leave alliteration entirely absent from the concluding stanza. By deviating from the poems established flow and slowing the pace down further with more punctuation, Mullahinsha, Drummeril, Black Shanco, the stanza becomes a very final statement and builds tension to the climax of the close, Dead loves that were born for me. The rhyme of me at the end is the culmination of the build up over the last two stanzas and demonstrates dramatically the speakers deep set hurt and regret as well as a sad acceptance. This is a move away from the narrators passionate anger and towards despondency. The narrator rarely refers to himself and is portrayed as quite self conscious in his anguish. He refers to his stumble and contrasts himself with the god Apollo in the second stanza. In Greek mythology Apollo is the sun god with connotations of light and with that, hope. Apollo represents the speakers unrealised childhood aspirations for happiness. He feels cheated by his aspirations and absence of self awareness and blames the circumstance of his life as the culprit, not himself. Apollo is also, significantly, the patron of artists and poets and as such could reflect Kavanaghs own removal from the narrator. The third and fourth stanzas centre around farm imagery and are suggestive of the cause of the narrators lost passion and lust for life, You told me the plough was immortal! This seems to hint at the speakers past vocation as a farmer and this ties in with the soil of Monaghan, presumably where the narrator grew up and worked. The poem gives the impression of a hard life of grafting with promise of achieving happiness. Ultimately the narrator feels betrayed by his vocation that has consumed his life and left him with an empty shell of memories and unrealised potential.

The fourth and fifth stanzas are perhaps the most powerful portrayals of emotion in the poem. The concentration of stinted, accusatory sentences contrasting images of optimism with dismal, pessimistic realisations conveys the deep, heartfelt bitterness that is consuming the narrator, You sang on steaming dunghills, The narrator repeatedly directs his venting by opening each line with You, which draws the audience into his resentment. Stanza five concludes with, You burgled my bank of youth! Enhanced with the alliteration the charge of the speaker is a last vent of his frustration and anger before the poem digresses into a more resigned and bitter conclusion in the final three stanzas. The relationship between the narrator and Monaghan is what drives the poem. The relationship often appears as one between two lovers, You perfumed my clothes, You sang, Lost the long hours of pleasure. The poet uses this to further the sense of betrayal felt by the speaker. It is suggestive of a previous time in his life, when he was happy. That time seems unrecognisable as truth and he perceives himself to have been in blissful ignorance. It is as if his heart has been broken that he has been deceived in committing his life to his land and work. The passionate bitterness conveyed in Stony Grey Soil from a narrator who harbours nothing but disappointment for his lifes work immerses the audience into Kavanaghs world of betrayal and regret. The sheer intensity of emotion is what is fascinating in the poem. An unconventionally broken heart, a lost vocation, a harsh landscape and an acrimonious lament are all utilised by Kavanagh to give us the character presented to us as the narrator.