MPR’s Tom Crann interviews Emerson College literature professor Daniel Tobin about Eugene McCarthy’s poetry.
McCarthy was a poet for much of his adult life, even in the midst of his political career. One of McCarthy's poems, "No Country for the Young", is included in a forthcoming anthology of Irish-American poetry. Tobin is editing that anthology and says McCarthy's place in the collection is well-deserved.
SPEAKER 1: He was a real poet. I mean, he practiced the art of poetry consistently. And he wrote a lot of poems. And you could tell by the confident voice in the poems that he was serious about the art and was accomplished some way in it.
SPEAKER 2: How prolific was he?
SPEAKER 1: Well, he has a collected poems. So that is pretty prolific for a man who's lived his life in the public eye. Most poets do like to carve away time for themselves to write. But most poets don't have that sort of public presence that a politician has, and a very active one.
SPEAKER 2: How good are the poems?
SPEAKER 1: Well, I found-- when I first started researching the anthology, I wanted to get a cross-section of Irish-American poetry. So I did want to read some of his poems because I knew he was a poet. But I wasn't sure how good they would be. And I wanted to include only good poems in the anthology. And in fact, I think he is a good poet. He has a good solid command of the art. And that is, I think, fairly unusual in this country. At least, you have somebody like Vaclav Havel. But not too many poets in this country actually seek public office and vice versa.
SPEAKER 2: Did he see himself in the continuation of the Irish tradition of poetry and just general all-around wordsmithing?
SPEAKER 1: Oh yes, I think he did. I do think he did. In fact, the poem "No Country For The Young", he's playing directly off of Irish legend and specifically the Irish poems that are included in the Imram, which are a collection of stories about people who go ahead and leave Ireland in exile, in search of mystery and the island of the young and so forth of Irish myth and legend. So he's very, very clearly a serious poet who sees himself both connected to the American landscape and the Irish landscape of poetry.
SPEAKER 2: Did his poetry get more attention because of his political fame? Or do you think that his poetry would stand up, even if we didn't know him as a senator and one-time presidential hopeful?
SPEAKER 1: Well, I don't know if he would be a major American poet. That might be a lot to ask for someone. There are very few of those. But I would say that his poems would stand up on their own right as works of art that deserve to be read. If not major works, then strong works of poetry. And I think that perhaps if he were not a politician devoting most of his time to public life, he might have been able to spend more time devoted to the art and might have become a very good, well-known poet.
SPEAKER 2: Professor Tobin, thank you very much for giving us some literary context for the late Senator Eugene McCarthy.
SPEAKER 1: Thank you very much for having me.
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