Scattered liberally throughout his work, the poet Patrick Kavanagh finds extraordinary affinity with the names and moods of the calendar months. He seems to revel in their musicality and meanings. ‘April’s ecstasy’ infuses himself and his spring landscape with a renewed desire for life. This is undoubtedly his favourite month, when as an apprentice farmer he is excited by the natural instinct to scatter seed on ‘the black eternity of April Clay’. Much later in life, when he most needs it, it is April that offers him ‘incredible’ healing and the ‘flowering of his catharsis’, in the manifold setting of a ‘cut-away bog’.

It is on ‘an Apple-ripe September morning’ that his alter ego Tarry Flynn embarks on a memorable threshing expedition. As autumn approaches, poignant memories of his father come to mind in ‘October-coloured weather’ which also acutely suggests his own preferred time to die, buried in the natural warmth of an October grave. Poetically, he is still eager to ‘hold November in the woods’, as he recalls that it was ‘on Grafton Street in November’ that he once embarked on his never-to-be-forgotten trip along the dangerous ledges of love. His bluebell rendezvous with Hilda in May, however, is sadly short lived. 

March is hailed as ‘a silversmith’ that brightens ‘every corner of the land’ yet is cruelly abrasive with the sting of its ‘cold black wind that blows ‘from Dundalk’.  Almost every month makes sequential appearance in the Great Hunger as Paddy Maguire drags himself from one farming task to the next, hoping against hope, month after month, for better prospects in love. February fodder hangs limply ‘from forlorn branches’ while his hopes of marriage are repeatedly sacrificed on a June altar. 

June, Kavanagh surprisingly considers, is ‘a stupid month, while its calendar neighbour July, glows in the early poetic accomplishment of a sonnet inspired by a dance at Billy Brennan’s barn on ‘Inniskeen Road on a July evening.’  His much-publicised rebirth as a poet occurs on Dublin’s Canal bank ‘in the tremendous silence of mid-July’ in 1955.  August seems to lack musicality but is fully redeemed in its festive 15th day, when even the least productive farmer comes to harvest and ‘at the Assumption’ murmurs thanksgiving.

‘December glinting fruit’ still clings to the apple trees near his home in Inniskeen as childhood memories of Christmas flood back into consciousness. Christmas is ritually re-enacted to the sound of music re-echoing across the wild bogs of Mucker. Its ultimate fulfilment will only be realised when Christ comes with ‘a January flower.’

Kavanagh’s ultimate delivery of his poetic harvest is signalled in ‘the leafy yellowness’ of an October landscape, when the characteristic light that accompanied him throughout his life reminds him that Eternity is here, and he can acclaim with confidence: ‘It is October over all my life.

But how did Kavanagh find such affinity with the calendar months and the various moods they offered? One explanation comes from his almost bookless background, when, apart from schoolbooks, one of the affordable publications that came into every Irish home, each month, was a little red magazine: The Messenger of the Sacred Heart. Between 1904 and 1937, this magazine was unique, in that in Ireland alone, it had a growing circulation of 2.7 million copies. Kavanagh was hungry for reading material and admitted to hiding it in his pocket and bringing it to the fields, despite his sisters’ protests, where he read it from cover to cover. The fields of Shancoduff were his library.  

Many fine theological reflections and improving serial stories were printed by the Jesuit editor of the Messenger, who selected authors best suited to instruct and inspire his readers. Topics remained in tune with the seasons and feasts of the Church. Each month was dedicated to a different saint or devotion.  One catholic layman, Brian O Higgins T.D., wrote a monthly poem, a celebration of the current season as well as relating it to devotion to the Sacred Heart. ‘Songs of the Sacred Heart’ appeared in serial form each month. Kavanagh, who was also of a religious frame of mind, was certain he could do better than O’Higgins and began to write poems of his own, inspired by the seasons, the months and how they resonated with his own faith. He saw how each month could inspire a new poem.

Later on, when he read and reread Moby Dick, he saw how Melville used November as a metaphor, when Ismael declares in its opening lines: ‘it was November in my soul’. Deprived of any form of mentorship for his writing, Kavanagh now had all the permission he needed to explore the mood and musicality of each calendar month and blend their colours into a medley of his own making.  This is why Kavanagh’s poetry still reflects the seasonal moods and colours of the Irish landscape, in a manner unmatched by other poets.

by Úna Agnew SSL