Before I left the United States for Ireland, I read The Cambridge Companion to Irish Modernism, which helped me better understand the nuances of modern Irish literature. Most of the essays in the anthology outline the distinctions between an Irish revivalist and an Irish modernist and the effects of these differences on Irish authors and literature. W.B. Yeats, an Irish revivalist, was a nationalist whose inner circle was comprised of many participants in the Easter Rising. Several of his poems are dedicated to Maude Gonne, a prominent member of the nationalist movement. At the time of Yeats’s death, W.H. Auden had just crossed the Atlantic on his way from England to America. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” is an elegy for Yeats in which Auden penned the famous phrase “poetry makes nothing happen.”

The Garden of Remembrance, featuring  Children of the Lir, a statue designed by Oisín Kelly, and a plaque showcasing Liam Mac Uistín’s poem “We Saw a Vision,” is dedicated to the participants of various uprisings who gave their lives for Irish freedom. Even though Yeats didn’t die for the nationalist movement, it was surreal to stand in a place dedicated to his friends who did die for the cause of Irish freedom and read an elegy written for him by an English-American poet. This intersection of place and identity (of both Yeats and Auden) is what I love so much about Transatlantic Modernism. The complexity of the history and citizenry of both men intersecting in single poem is a testament to the efficacy of literature as a medium through which we express the complexities of life.