Synopses & Reviews
A new edition of the later selected work of a Nobel Prize-winning poetOften considered to be "the greatest poet of our age" (The Guardian), Seamus Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." He saw poetry as a vocation and credited it with "the power to persuade the vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values." Paul Muldoon wrote that Heaney was "the only poet I can think of who was recognized worldwide as having moral as well as literary authority."
Shortly before his death in 2013, Seamus Heaney began to compile Selected Poems 1988-2013, and although he was unable to complete the project, his choices have been followed here. This volume encapsulates the finest work from Seeing Things (1991) with its lines of loss and revelation; The Spirit Level (1996) where we experience "the poem as ploughshare that turns time / Up and over."; the landmark translation of Beowulf (1999); Electric Light (2001), a book of origins and oracles; and his final collections, District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010), which limn the interconnectedness of being, our lifelines to our inherited past.
Review
Praise for Seamus Heaney
"Perhaps the best descriptions of Seamus Heaney's extraordinarily rich and varied oeuvre come from the poet's own work. Mr. Heaney has created a remarkable series of poems that stay 'true to the impact of external reality' while at the same time remaining 'sensitive to the inner laws of the poet's being.'" —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"Having just reread most of his poems, I find myself more, not less, interested, and convinced that I have only begun to plumb their bracing depths . . . The poems stay in the mind, which is the one essential feature of major poetry." —Jay Parini, The Nation
"Heaney's commitment to the independence of his art, to the pursuit of shape and richness and abundant ambiguity, is also a profound commitment to the quality of public life . . . In a dark time, Heaney . . . has turned borders and dividing lines into rich frontiers." —Fintan O'Toole, The New York Review of Books
"Arguably the finest poet now writing in English." —James Shapiro, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His poems, plays, translations, and essays include Opened Ground, Electric Light, Beowulf, The Spirit Level, District and Circle, and Finders Keepers. Robert Lowell praised Heaney as the "most important Irish poet since Yeats."
Table of Contents
from
Seeing Things (1991)The Golden Bough Markings Man and Boy Seeing Things An August NightField of Vision The Pitchfork The Settle Bed
from Glanmore Revisitedi Scrabble ii The Cot v Lustral Sonnet vii The Skylight A Pillowed Head A Royal Prospect Wheels within Wheels Fosterling
from SquaringsLightenings Settings Crossings Squarings from
The Spirit Level (1996)The Rain Stick Mint A Sofa in the FortiesKeeping Going Two LorriesDamson Weighing In St Kevin and the Blackbird
from The Flight PathMycenae Lookout1 The Watchmans War 2 Cassandra 3 His Dawn Vision4 The Nights 5 His Reverie of Water The Gravel Walks Whitby-sur-Moyola ‘Poets Chair The Swing Two Stick Drawings A Call The Errand 100A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also The StrandThe Walk At the Wellhead At Banagher Tollund Postscript from
Beowulf (1999)[lines 1-163][lines 3137-3182] from
Electric Light (2001)Perch Lupins
from Out of the Bag The Little Canticles of Asturias Ballynahinch Lake The Clothes Shrine Glanmore Eclogue Sonnets from Hellas1 Into Arcadia2 Conkers 3 Pylos 4 The Augean Stables 5 Castalian Spring 6 Desfi na Vitruviana Audenesque To the Shade of Zbigniew Herbert Bodies and Souls1 In the Afterlife2 Nights of 57 3 The Bereaved
from Electric Lightfrom
District and Circle (2006)A Shiver Anahorish 1944 Anything Can Happen District and Circle Wordsworths Skates Found Prose1 The Lagans Road 2 Tall Dames 3 Boarders The Lift Nonce Words Stern
from Out of This World1 ‘Like everybody else . . . In IowaHöfn The Tollund Man in Springtime Planting the Alder Tates Avenue Fiddleheads Quitting Time The Blackbird of Glanmore from
Human Chain (2010)‘Had I not been awake Album The Conway Stewart Uncoupled The Butts Chanson dAventure Miracle Human Chain The Baler Eelworks The Riverbank Field Route 110 Wraithsi Sidhe ii Parking Lot iii White Nights ‘The door was open and the house was dark In the Attic A Kite for Aibhín In Time (2013)