Irish America
Irish America
Kevin James Doyle is an actor, stand-up comedian, and writer of the off-broadway show How To Be a New Yorker which ran for 415 performances. His first comedy special, The 30 Year Old Virgin (which won rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is out on Amazon, and he has three comedy specials coming out next year that will air on a bunch of platforms including Amazon … [Read more...] about What Are You Like? Kevin James Doyle
How the search for her missing husband turned this Irish wife and mother into a daring and dauntless soldier. She was born Christian Cavanagh in 1667, although throughout her life, she changed names and identities with particular zest. Known mostly as Kit Cavanagh or Christopher Welsh, she dabbled in surnames that included Welch, Welsh, Jones, Davies, and oddly, Mother … [Read more...] about The Life And Adventures of Kit Cavanagh
He is best known for one part of one poem he published in 1873. Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s “Ode” (which is also referred to by its opening line, “We are the music makers”) actually consists of nine stanzas, but the first three stanzas are the ones of enduring popularity; the rest of the poem, in fact, is typically omitted when appearing in anthologies. But the three opening … [Read more...] about Arthur O’Shaughnessy: Reluctant Herpetologist, Ardent “Music Maker”
It is somehow fitting that the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 has become inseparable from Irish poetry. If, for a moment in Northern Ireland, “hope and history rhymed” or those involved in resolving the conflict “walked on air against their better judgment,” phrases that politicians and other speechifiers ubiquitously quoted, they had poet Seamus Heaney to thank for their … [Read more...] about Walking Into The Marvelous With Declan Kiberd
"We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams....Yet we are the movers and shakers of the world forever it seems.” – Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy Arthur O’Shaughnessy is known for originating the line “movers and shakers,” and this issue of Irish America is full of both. There is something for everyone. Our genealogical detective Megan Smolenyak tracks … [Read more...] about Trailblazers Past & Present
