Derek Mahon: XVII Imbolc

Allusion to classical place Rome (America as a modern Rome)

Relationship to Classical text Apart from the mention of rus-in-urbe, from Martial’s Epigrams XII, LVII, there are no direct allusions to a classical source. However, Mahon’s desire to leave ‘the turbulence of this modern Rome’ recalls the contrasts Martial draws between Rome and his home in Bilbilis (e.g. Epigrams 1.49 and 12.18), and perhaps also the sentiment of Juvenal’s third Satire

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Mahon’s poem is address to the Irish painter J.B. Yeats, whose book of letters from New York he has been reading, with the interest of a fellow Irish exile (J. B. Yeats, Letters to his son and others, ed. Joseph Hone. London: Faber and Faber, 1944.).