When it comes to discussing ‘Irish identity’, critics are inclined to develop an acute sense of place, most notably an indeterminate space tentatively tucked in between inverted commas; indeed, the more seasoned hack will sigh in resignation at having to go and encounter for the millionth time the reality of ‘that will-o’-the-wisp which has caused the shedding of so much innocent ink’. One influential writer, Peter McDonald, has recently objected to the intellectually stultifying manner in which identity politics is discussed within Irish studies. However, in his justifiable eagerness to expose the hidden agendas behind the systematic erection of constrictive canonical frames around Louis MacNeice, McDonald is certainly rash in his description of ‘Irishness’ as being a ‘menacing, but ultimately empty, phantom of national “identity”’; and although Misidentities, his later eloquent disquisition upon the subject, convincingly outlines the political impracticalities of using such an abstract concept to overcome sectarian divisiveness in Northern Ireland, it is impossible to disagree with the counter-assertion that even though ‘Irishness’ is admittedly an unstable category, often defining itself in opposition to the former colonising power, nevertheless it is an ‘anthropological acne’ that breaks out no matter what poultice is applied. At the heart of the continuing malaise has been the relegation of Irish to the status of a minority language; in the words of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, ‘our self-absorbed Irish complex about “Irishness” – so tedious! – would be far less strong if we used our own national language like the Danes, or like Israel, which really did manage to impose Hebrew’. In what follows, I shall explore how Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian cope with the contentious issue of Irishness, and how they use intertextuality to stave off what Thomas Kinsella has diagnosed as the alienated condition of Irish writers – the ‘divided mind’ – due to the disjunction between English and Irish cultural traditions.