Archive for June, 2018

Jack B. Yeats

Posted in Mount Jerome Cemetery (IE) with tags , , on June 25, 2018 by Cade

August 29, 1871 – March 28, 1957

Being the younger brother of one of Ireland’s most famous sons is a daunting existence. But, Jack Butler Yeats – brother to Nobel-winning poet, William – was not only up for the task, he matched his sibling punch for punch. Though he, too, found some success in writing, J.B.’s true medium was art. A talented illustrator, he moved into Expressionism and went on to become the most popular Irish painter of the 20th Century. He was celebrated for depicting, what playwright Samuel Beckett called “the issueless predicament of existence.” Meaning, Jack was able to dramatically and beautifully capture life at it’s most mundane and normal.  Continue reading →

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Christy Brown

Posted in Glasnevin Cemetery with tags , , on June 18, 2018 by Cade

June 05, 1932 – September 07, 1981

Christy Brown was a writer and artist who, due to having cerebral palsy, wrote and painted with the toes on his left foot. His autobiography, aptly named “My Left Foot” was adapted into the 1989 Academy Award-winning film starring Daniel Day-Lewis. One of 13 (surviving) children, Brown’s family was instrumental in nurturing his talent despite pressure to send him off to a hospital to be raised. In all, Christy wrote several novels, memoirs, poetry collections and painted dozens of stylized paintings. He was married in 1972 and his life and health began to fall apart. Continue reading →

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Posted in Glasnevin Cemetery with tags , , on June 12, 2018 by Cade

July 28, 1844 – June 08, 1889

“And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”

God’s Grandeur – Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins was temporally a Victorian poet, but due to his innovative use of language, alliteration, meter and rhyme, he is widely considered one of the first modernist poets. His use of “sprung rhythm” – a term he coined to shake off the restrictive nature of the conventional meters in English poetry at the time – varied the accent syllables in his verses and allowed him to construct and rhyme freely. His work was a precursor to the free verse movements of the 20th century. A Jesuit priest who grew up in an incredibly artistic family, Hopkins’ work regularly focused on religion and nature…often at the same time.

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