Abstract

If we were to pick one poem to sum up the sense of Thomas Kinsella's work, it would be 'Leaf-Eater' from Nightwalker and Other Poems (1968): The image of an insistent animal life confronting unknown immensities, the language of a blind groping and twisting, and the expressed need to sacrifice the supports for the self in order to sustain an inward progress - all these are characteristic of Kinsella's poetry. Similarly, Songs of the Psyche may be regarded as the central, even the defining, pamplet of the Peppercanister publication series so far.