For anyone who majored in English in the 1950s, as I did, it has to be Yeats. Our heads are still stuffed with Yeats quotations; hence the startling number of books with titles taken from "The Second Coming" alone. The film "No Country for Old Men" prompted me to look up Cormac McCarthy’s education, and sure enough, he was in college in the 1950s, studying English.

Now here is why, as I best remember hearing when I took a course at Wellesley from the poet Richard Wilbur: When T.S. Eliot re-visited Harvard in 1950, a seminar was held at which distinguished professors from all around gave their analyses of his new play, "The Cocktail Party." And when they had all finished presenting their complicated and erudite theories, Mr. Eliot got up, said simply, "No, it’s Alcestis," and sat down. "From then on," Mr. Wilbur said, "when you were in any college’s English Department, you would be introduced with great pride to Our Yeats Man. It was the same person who, the year before, had been introduced as Our Eliot Man." (And in my four years of English courses, Mr. Wilbur was the only professor who even mentioned Eliot.)

An update: When my daughter majored in literature at Harvard, it was Seamus Heaney— Famous Seamus, as they said, with his young female admirers, the Heaney-boppers. Admission to an advanced class was based on the submission of an original poem and an interview. When he saw her, with her red hair, blue eyes and fair skin, he naturally asked, in his wonderfully sonorous and accented voice, "So where do the Martins hail from?"

"Trust me," she replied, "you don’t want to know." (He trusted her, and she got in.)

I don’t know if I love Irish artists more than any other national group because my mother was Irish-American or because Irish writers and actors are just better. I love Yeats and Shaw and Liam Neeson and others on the list, and I’m always happy when St. Patrick’s Day comes and we are reminded of the Irish contribution to the arts.

Most Irish authors have been inspirational to me——W.B. Yeats, Synge, O’Casey, Beckett, to name just a few. But, my favorite has been James Joyce. I took a course at Barnard that took a year reading Ulysses and on the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s birth I spent the day celebrating Bloomsday, June 16, 2004 in Ireland at Joyce House in Dublin.

Joyce was a genius, he was a mad man. He suffered and he celebrated. He was loud and he was quiet. He cried for independence and freedom. He was political; he was personal. He was ambiguous, but clear. He was an elitist, but he was a street person. And he loved Molly Bloom and she was mad as a hatter, and she loved Leopold, in her fashion. And Leopold loved prostitutes, and everybody screwed and everybody got lost and everybody got found and the world was a mess, but everything was in order.

To be read out loud, to be whispered, to be sung, to understand, to not understand, to treasure, to be glad he was BORN. James Joyce is my favorite.

I was born in Youngstown, Ohio. We were fairly poor like everybody else where I lived, so the area wasn’t poetic and I don’t recall any poetry from my English classes. My father was well educated but he returned from the war where he had driven an ambulance, so depressed he was not thinking about poetry. I was shipped early to New York and the Neighborhood Playhouse as it was assumed all around that I would become an actress and my introduction to Irish poets came, not from Sandy Meisner, who ran the Playhouse, but from a young actor there I fancied. Young women do odd things to keep young men in love with them – I took on James Joyce! The first two times I read Ulysses I might as well have been blind. I was reminded of that torture recently when I first read Ray Kurzweil, probably the most erudite futurist scientist swinging out there. I was saved by Joyce when I discovered how to read him to others, to act him.

I fell in and out of love routinely in my early days and fell insanely in love with an Irishman. He isn’t the type to quote Yeats or Joyce but he has the uncanny ability to know things he had never been taught - the way a genius can - he can pull up poetry from nowhere at will. He is in the movie business so I have met a number of Irish actors and they do all seem to spout poetry like music. And some years ago I actually owned a home and lived in Dublin. It seemed to me when I lived there that the Irish rarely produced anything but Irish plays so I did get a bit of an Irish education through actors and the theatre. Not enough to make me expert like you wOw friends. In fact, when my granddaughter was in lower school and her English teacher asked the students to go to their grandparents and find out who was their favorite poet, I didn’t even think Irish – I sent her Ted Hughes because I found him so attractive - most of the women I knew did.

I know another smart Irishman. He sat next to me on a plane and he was instantly helpful to me about my new house in Dublin. He was adorable. When I left the plane he laughed and said, tell your friends you made a pal, today, of Bernie Aherne!

I saw Bono’s name on our list and I consider him a choice friend. In fact I am forever telling people that if I return to this world I want to return as Bono. He is living his life so fully, blessed with so many talents and great intelligence and great wit as well as ho ho humor - and kindness and generosity and sincere compassion coupled with the determination to do something about his compassions, and he is fearless and he keeps going about his global activisms, he marches on just as much as he leaps and shakes and wiggles. And he is loyal – U2 has been together since grade school. I met him when, all together, they bought a home across the bay from me in France – it is easily the most fun place in the world to have lunch in the summer! And to top it all off, his wife, Ali, deserves him just as he deserves her. She is just as effective, just as rare.

So I am short on poets but I have plenty of love for Ireland and the Irish. I didn’t see one snake when I lived there!

Happy St Patrick’s day to you all.

PS: if you haven’t seen The Seafarer - for heaven’s sake hurry up. It closes March 30 – the best group of actors, the richest and funniest play, it is an evening that sends you high! And of course, it’s Irish! (It’s playing on Broadway at Booth Theatre, 222 West 45th Street, Manhattan.)

Back in 1965 there was a film titled “Young Cassidy,” with a very fine actor named Rod Taylor.

He was assaying the life and times of writer Sean O’Casey. He appeared in the company of one of cinema’s greatest casts ever – Flora Robson, Julie Christie, Sian Phillips, Maggie Smith, Jack MacGowran, Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave.

Nobody seemed to care about this film except little old me. I was just devastated by it and from that moment on I treasured my Irish ancestors and the mystical romanticism of their trials, tribulations and resulting influences on western culture. In our more present life and times this came to fruition in the dramatic “Angela’s Ashes” from Frank McCourt.

The pain of the Irish has given us the core of English-speaking literature so who cannot be dazzled by their breed? I am pleased to have the McCalls in my own background although sometimes I think the NYC celebration of St. Patrick’s Day is an oppressive riot and not worthy of the heritage.

Let me give you some opinions. Shaw backed terrible political systems and the terrible men behind them, which contributed to the suffering of millions, and his work, even Heartbreak House, was thin, emotionally and philosophically. But when I was a kid I saw a production on TV — I think it was PBS — but in those days it actually might have been one of the broadcast networks — of, I think, Major Barbara. And it contained a speech I’ll never forget. A woman — damaged, struggling — says, "I made myself lonely for you!"

Oh my goodness. Hit me like a punch. His wit was marvelous, and if he’d had more than that in his arsenal who knows what an artist he’d have been.

Peter O’Toole’s eyes should win the Pulitzer Prize. Samuel Beckett was a hack. Flannery O’Connor was a bit of a genius. She understood more than the South, she understood human disturbance and complexity, and the mysteries of grace. I always quote her to my Catholic school class: "Mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind."

Dennis Leary has a nice gritty working class Irish element in his work — a real lost man/wild man howl. Ryan O’Neal was sort of a moist lucky man, wasn’t he? His daughter is sad and beautiful. Oscar Wilde was heroic. The meaning of his life is not only in his cleverness and industry, he died trying to be an honest man, with himself and with God. It was when he found his real greatness that the world really turned away from him. When he was a charming cynic with great style they loved him.

Joyce: his greatest work is not the big bloated show-offy novels but the short stories — "Clay", "The Dead." But people don’t talk about them because they make sense. Bono is an extremely famous singer and songwriter who carries in him an air of fraudulence, but unlike most people of whom this could be said he has done a lot of good.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers seems to me silly, and mildly unstable. Yeats? Yeats is next to Meyers? Nice list! "Swift has sailed unto his death. Savage indignation there. Cannot lacerate his breast. Imitate him if you dare. World besotted traveler he. Served human liberty." He was a great genius who struggled, in his life, with the obvious. Emotionally he couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag. But he was a great man, and time "worships language and forgives all of those by whom it lives."

I met Pierce Brosnan once and he was nice. I’ll never forget the look of dumb shock on Sinead O’Connor’s face when she tore up the picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live and no one in the audience applauded. It was as if she were thinking, "Oh, Americans must be different from audiences back home." She understood nothing about our politesse. She learned. I think she’s a real artist but also living proof that art requires a foundation of stability in order to fully reveal itself.

Van Morrison. I love the album "Live at the Grand Opera House." Van Morrison just makes me fly! I love his music, all his music, his early music, "Brown Eyed Girl." Never a bad Van Morrison song. Sure and begorra. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I sort of miss the days—the 60’s I think—when the Irish artists gave drinking a good name. I mean, those guys could really DRINK. They gave it meaning. Elevated it to an art … and then some. They OWNED alcohol. And for a while, they owned New York City.

There were the O’Neal’s restaurants. Then The Ginger Man. Preceded by The Ginger Man the hugely successful novel by J.P. Donleavy. Whom I met. And O’Toole. And Collin Farrell has some of that swagger. Enya….does not. She’s another Irish name. The kind of singer always played by masseuses. Unless you ask them NOT to play Enya and then they look at you with pity.

I also always hated those Irish Spring soap commercials. With the huge hulk wearing an Irish fisherman’s sweater speaking in the phoniest brogue loping along a country lane with a fresh-smelling red-haired lass. But I digress. Yeats. I agree with all you lassies. Made me swoon. Still does. And let’s not forget Frank McCourt and Angela’s Ashes for real struggling, suffering Irish. The portrait of grinding poverty. The unromantic alcoholic.

I always remember when I lived on Central Park South walking home on St Paddy’s Day past a long line of people puking. Wearing metallic green bowlers. A less glamorous vision of "likker". By far. But Noonan, our wordsmith, blogs beautifully about the Irish. And Ms Nevins. And I agree with Whoopi. Go Van.