Seamus Heaney

Heteronym

Heteronym

Reader
Seamus Heaney has a new poetry collection, Human Chain, coming out, and it's been nominated for the Forward Poetry Prize. I though this would be a nice opportunity to start a thread on this Irish poet and Nobel Laureate.

I've read some of his poems on the internet, but I'm interested in getting better acquainted with him. He's had a pretty prolific career:

1966: Death of a Naturalist
1969: Door into the Dark
1972: Wintering Out
1975: North
1979: Field Work
1984: Station Island
1987: The Haw Lantern
1991: Seeing Things
1996: The Spirit Level
2001: Electric Light
2006: District and Circle
2010: Human Chain

And this is just his poetry. He's also written plays and essays, and translated poetry, including the classic Beowulf.
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
Heteronym said:
2010: Human Chain
Click to expand...
Yes. I was just notified by Amazon that this item goes on sale in the middle of Sep. Can hardly wait.

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Bartleby

Bartleby

Moderator
Been reading his poetry, through his first two books, death of a naturalist and door into the dark. They've provoked conflicting feelings on me. I mean, for one I could appreciate how integral his poems were, in creating a worldview that's really his own, through the careful and specific descriptions of the land and of labourers, Irish rural stuff in a nutshell :p and that sometimes exasperated me, for, even though his pieces are quite short, most of them are so filled with unknown earthly vocabulary that I spent more time looking it up (and looking up at the various definitions until usually the most obscure one made sense) than reading the poem. And a few of them I just couldn't make sense of altogether, for they required I have some knowledge of the context in which a given action was happening because he wouldn't name things explicitly but count on us to be acquaintanted with what he was talking about. But then some of the poems were accessible enough after the looking up of words and they would render beautifully moving scenes, landscapes etc (even when I wished they were more generous in their painting), and the conflicting thing is that despite being quite difficult, impenetrable at times, there's just something about them that made me go back to them over and over, and not give up on reading. So yeah, overall I liked what I read. I just hope that I eventually find a book of his that speaks to me more in its entirety.

I gave 4 stars to both at goodreads, though I liked the first one a little more.

in the end of Death there were some really beautiful love poems, i guess my favourite was:

Scaffolding

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.


 
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SpaceCadet

SpaceCadet

Quiet Reader
Similar feeling here. I tried to read his 'New Selected Poems', some of them were clear enough for me, others totally escaped my understanding due to the use of vocabulary I am not familiar with and/or specific context which I have no knowledge of. Nevertheless... there is a particular beauty and simplicity to his poetry which I like very much.
 
Cleanthess

Cleanthess

Dinanukht wannabe
From time to time Heaney was capable of stuff like this:

A Dog Was Crying Tonight In Wicklow Also

When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message:
They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn’t want to end up lost forever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back to the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood:
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
(The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu.)

But death and human beings took second place
When he trotted off the path and started barking
At another dog in broad daylight just barking
Back at him from the far bank of a river.

And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first,
The toad who’d overheard in the beginning
What the dog was meant to tell. “Human beings,” he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
“Human beings want death to last forever."

Then Chukwu saw the people’s souls in birds
Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees
Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once
And nothing that the dog would tell him later
Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in mud,
The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.
 
B

Ben Jackson

Well-known member
At a Potato Digging (Death of a Naturalist 1966)

IV

Under a gay flotilla of gulls
Rhythm deadens, the workers stop.
Brownbread and tea in bright canfuls
Are served for lunch. Dead beat, they flop

Down in the ditch and take their fill,
Thankfully breaking timeless fasts:
Then, stretches on the faithless ground, spill
Libations of cold tea, scatter crusts.

Freedman (North 1975)
Subjugated yearly under arches,
Manumitted by parchments and degrees,
My murax was the purple dye of lents
On calendars all fast and abstinence.

'Memento humo quia pulvises:'
I would kneel to be impressed by ashes,
Silk friction, a light stipple of dust---
I was under thumb too like all my caste
One of the earth-starred denizens indelibly
I sought the mark in vain on the groomed optimi:
Their estimating, census-taking eyes
Fastened on my mouldy brow like lampreyes.

Then poetry arrived in that city---
I would abjure all can't and self pity--
And poetry wiped my brow and sped me.
Now they will say I bite the hand that fed me.

Ranking the Heaney volumes:

Seeing Things--- a departure from the archaeological style from North and political climate of Station Island, the volume is more personal in outlook, looking at family, childhood, poetry and memory.
Station Island--- political, looking at Irish Troubles, the sequence of poems found in Station Island (consisting of three day pilgrimage with each unite of modern pilgrim's exercises is Station and large part of each station involves walking bare foot and praying round the beds, which are stone-circles which are said to be remains of early medieval monastic cells), suggests the influence of pilgrimage of Geoffrey Chaucer and visionary strangeness of Eliot. Henry encounters ghosts from Irish past, and his guide, drawing comparison to Dante, is Irish master Joyce. There are also influences from Eastern European poetry here: Brodsky, Milosz, Sorescu, Holub, Herbert, poets he begun to translate, making him more cosmopolitan.
North-- this collection makes use of Scandanivian myths and Legends to reveal the connection between Ireland and Nortu Europe, with Irish troubles at the heart of the volume.
Death of a Naturalist--- first volume which set forth the themes of Heaney by using the pen to dig the past, Heaney assures himself of using the pen to explore his national past and act as conscience of the country, like Milosz.

Definitely one of the finest Post-war poets, appealing because of his down-to-earth language which displays ethical beauty (blending pre-christian and Catholic insights), and lyrical depth. Deseves his place in the premier league of poetry, with influences rainging from Virgil and Dante to contemporary like Elizabeth Bishop, Milosz, Brodsky.
 
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