"It's a long way to Park Avenue from the Pembroke Road flat I shared with Patrick," Peter Kavanagh agrees. Since Peter left Ireland, he has written 10 books, mainly on Patrick Kavanagh and his poetry, writes Brendan Lynch.
"But the Dublin village that my brother and I knew is history now. And since I left Ireland, my focus has always been forward. I don't live in the past. I live for today."
Since Peter left Ireland, he has written and published 10 books, mainly on Patrick Kavanagh and his poetry. "This is in fulfilment of an obligation to him, but even more so to poetry." Now Peter, who celebrated his 88th birthday on Thursday, has started work on a long-mooted book about his life in New York, where he has lived happily for almost five decades.
"This is my home now," he insists. "When I moved back here in 1957, I settled into an area in central Manhattan then divided lengthways by an elevated railroad that ran down Third Avenue for the length of the island. It poured down clouds of dust on pedestrians in the summer and showers of snow and muck in the winter. East of this, one avoided unless you were going slumming.
"The society here hadn't changed in a hundred years. The houses were all of brick or brown sandstone and were never more than four storeys. Push-carts sold goods on the cobbled streets, little shops were three or more to a block catering to the many racial groups in the area - Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Italians and many others. Not an Irishman around to intrude on me by talking of Croke Park or to report on my fallen social status.
"As I went in the door of my building there was an Italian fruit-and-vegetable store on one side and a dry-goods store on the other run by two Jewish merchants. 'What do you do?' one of them asked me. While I stumbled out my response he settled the question for me. 'You sell information,' he said. So afterwards when asked my occupation I had the ready answer: I sold information!"
It was in this first-floor apartment at 238 East 29th Street that Peter commenced his publishing venture. "I built my Hand Press for the purpose of publishing Patrick's Canal Poems which no book publisher would touch. After a struggle I managed to print a small book called Recent Poems and had it copyrighted. It was a poor production and full of misprints but at least it was a record for posterity.
"When the city of New York needed a new firehouse in 1963, I had to leave my atmospheric home. But I was in great luck. On the very day President Kennedy was shot I found a similar apartment a block away on the corner of 30th Street and Second. The following year I married Ann Keeley, an associate director with NBC Television and here we were destined to remain for the next 37 years.
"I learned to my surprise that I had landed in an unobtrusive artists' colony. My social life centred on Bob Hammnerquist's Art Gallery where I met Tom Sawyer, who had been a Shakespearean actor, a friend of John Gielgud and his circle. In addition, he was a cousin of Tony Perkins so he had the full sweep of the theatre at his command. I met him once a week for coffee and he regaled me with stories of the theatre. When he died six years ago I was one of a group of friends who scattered his ashes together with the ashes of his dog, Hobart, in the East River.
"These were peaceful years, so I could begin work in earnest on publishing the record of Patrick's work. In 1969 I issued Lapped Furrows, the correspondence between Patrick and myself from 1938 to 1967, followed by November Haggard which included his unpublished verse and the epic Lough Derg. Then in 1972 Complete Poems and a bibliography. Several other books followed until 1979 when I issued Sacred Keeper,a documentary biography of Patrick Kavanagh.
"Sadly, developers eventually interrupted my idyll and after some confrontations, I made a deal with James Kennelly and without a tear I entered the world of respectability by moving to Park Avenue. People will think I fell into a fortune when they read my current address!"
Patrick Kavanagh visited New York in 1956, when he met Ezra Pound, and again in 1965, two years before his death. Peter remembers: "On that last visit, he was in better form than I had seen him in years. He loved New York and he was happy staying with us. We enjoyed many lazy walks along the East River."
Though far from Monaghan and Ireland, Peter Kavanagh reads The Irish Times regularly. "But I get the impression of Dublin as a city so changed that living there for me now would be as foreign as living, say, in Birmingham," he says. "The slogan 'Swords into ploughshares' is familiar but churches into restaurants is new. And the flow of money! The total lack of shame and excessive greed of politicians. . ." Peter finds that writing is his best relaxation. "And every night before going to sleep I read a book with poetic interest. All the European classics."
He is unimpressed with much modern writing. "Is there anyone who has anything to say? Yet thousands are beating their computers like Muslims beating their breasts on pilgrimage and what are they producing except literary chatter?
"Have I turned into a total crank? Not really. It has ever been thus. And when the prophet does come he is crucified." Peter is recovering from surgery to clear a clogged renal artery and looking forward to visiting Ireland this year to celebrate the centenary of Patrick's birth.
"I am in quite good form, Not perfect, but there are few of my age as nimble who can walk erect!"