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Derek Mahon: XV: Smoke

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

XV: Smoke

 

The Yellow Book, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 1997

253-254

Allusion to Classical figure Xenophon

Allusion to classical place Refers to ‘Elysian yellows and blues’, Xenophon’s Persia.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The declaration ‘away my wind-harp and my dejection odes’ alludes to Coleridge’s poetry and opium-fuelled reveries, i.e. ‘The Eolian Harp’ (1795) and ‘Dejection: An Ode’ (1802). The poem is crammed with intertextual references relating to decadence and the poetic imagination, of which the classical represents just one strand. (See p.297-8 in H. Haughton, The Poetry of Derek Mahon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.)

Derek Mahon