'Never altogether the same. But the same': strategies of revision in Thomas Kinsella's Notes from the Land of the Dead

摘要

The publishing history of Notes from the Land of the Dead is a complex one, heralding a change in Kinsella's attitude towards textual revision and volume publication. This article explores the ways in which the evolution of key poems from this collection demonstrates altering aesthetic priorities, while at the same time calling attention to the issue of continuity in Kinsella's work as a whole. His committed engagement with difficult and increasingly irreconcilable ideas can be traced in his rethinking and repositioning of these poems.