As the author of verse ranging from the personal and psychological to the satirical and political, Thomas Kinsella is one of Ireland's most distinguished poets and critics. He has been labeled an enigma: while his early work is rooted entirely in an international literary tradition, his later poetry, influenced by Jungian philosophy and Irish myth, has been called ponderous, obscure, and abstract. In Thomas Kinsella, author Donatella Abbate Badin emphasizes the continuity in Kinsella's early and later poetry, focusing on the interdependence of his works. She argues that when the poet's themes and images are explored carefully, they constitute an organic whole. Deeply grounded in both the present and the mythical Irish experience, Kinsella's poems are reflections of the life of the poet himself.