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Seamus Heaney
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Poet and critic are well met, as one of our best writers on poetry takes up one of the world's great poets.
Where other books on the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney have dwelt chiefly on the biographical, geographical, and political aspects of his writing, this book looks squarely and deeply at Heaney's poetry as art. A reading of the poet's development over the past thirty years, Seamus Heaney tells a story of poetic inventiveness, of ongoing experimentation in form and expression. It is an inspired and nuanced portrait of an Irish poet of public as well as private life, whose work has given voice to his troubled times.
With characteristic discernment and eloquence, Helen Vendler traces Heaney's invention as it evolves from his beginnings in Death of a Naturalist (1966) through his most recent volume, The Spirit Level (1996). In sections entitled "Second Thoughts," she considers an often neglected but crucial part of Heaney's evolving talent: self-revision. Here we see how later poems return to the themes or genres of the earlier volumes, and reconceive them in light of the poet's later attitudes or techniques. Vendler surveys all of Heaney's efforts in the classical forms--genre scene, elegy, sonnet, parable, confessional poem, poem of perception--and brings to light his aesthetic and moral attitudes.
Seamus Heaney's development as a poet is inextricably connected to the violent struggle that has racked Northern Ireland. Vendler shows how, from one volume to the next, Heaney has maintained vigilant attention toward finding a language for his time--"symbols adequate for our predicament," as he has said. The worldwide response to those discovered symbols suggests that their relevance extends far beyond this moment.
Where other books on the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney have dwelt chiefly on the biographical, geographical, and political aspects of his writing, this book looks squarely and deeply at Heaney's poetry as art. A reading of the poet's development over the past thirty years, Seamus Heaney tells a story of poetic inventiveness, of ongoing experimentation in form and expression. It is an inspired and nuanced portrait of an Irish poet of public as well as private life, whose work has given voice to his troubled times.
With characteristic discernment and eloquence, Helen Vendler traces Heaney's invention as it evolves from his beginnings in Death of a Naturalist (1966) through his most recent volume, The Spirit Level (1996). In sections entitled "Second Thoughts," she considers an often neglected but crucial part of Heaney's evolving talent: self-revision. Here we see how later poems return to the themes or genres of the earlier volumes, and reconceive them in light of the poet's later attitudes or techniques. Vendler surveys all of Heaney's efforts in the classical forms--genre scene, elegy, sonnet, parable, confessional poem, poem of perception--and brings to light his aesthetic and moral attitudes.
Seamus Heaney's development as a poet is inextricably connected to the violent struggle that has racked Northern Ireland. Vendler shows how, from one volume to the next, Heaney has maintained vigilant attention toward finding a language for his time--"symbols adequate for our predicament," as he has said. The worldwide response to those discovered symbols suggests that their relevance extends far beyond this moment.
206 pages, Paperback
First published November 2,1998
This edition
- Format
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206 pages, Paperback
- Published
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March 4, 2000 by Harvard University Press
- ISBN
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9780674002050
- ASIN
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0674002059
- Language
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English
Characters More characters
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Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney MRIA (1939 - 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is Death of a Naturalist (1966), his first major published volume....
About the author
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Helen Vendler is the A. Kingsley Porter University Professor at Harvard University, where she received her PhD in English and American Literature in 1960. Before joining the Harvard faculty, Vendler taught at Cornell, Swarthmore, Haverford, Smith, and Boston University.
Vendler has written books on Yeats, Herbert, Keats, Stevens, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Heaney, and, most recently, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (2007), Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill (2010); Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries' (2010); and The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry (2015). She also reviews contemporary poetry for the New Republic, London Review of Books, and other journals. She has held fellowships from, among others, the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Center, and National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Swedish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Modern Language Association, of which she was president in 1980.
Vendler has written books on Yeats, Herbert, Keats, Stevens, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Heaney, and, most recently, Our Secret Discipline: Yeats and Lyric Form (2007), Last Looks, Last Books: Stevens, Plath, Lowell, Bishop, Merrill (2010); Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries' (2010); and The Ocean, the Bird, and the Scholar: Essays on Poets and Poetry (2015). She also reviews contemporary poetry for the New Republic, London Review of Books, and other journals. She has held fellowships from, among others, the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Center, and National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Swedish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Modern Language Association, of which she was president in 1980.
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