These essays show that he is almost equally formidable as an autobiographer and critic."--Robert Greacen, Irish Independent The Figure in the Cave selects the prose of one of Ireland's foremost contemporary poets - part autobiography, part criticism, part self-commentary - a gathering, from the mid-century to the present day, that marks a lifetime's critical engagement with literature in both Europe and America. In the title essay Montague looks over his career as a writer; in others he describes a coming-of-age in Ulster, exp