Synopses & Reviews
Seamus Heaney is one of the most popular Irish poets writing today, and although his critics have recognized the centrality of the language of his poetry and his pronouncements on language, these aspects of his work have received little concentrated critical attention. Berhnard O'Donoghue, himself a poet, works chronologically through Heaney's poetry -- focusing on Heaney's writing on the appropriate language of poetry and his theory of poetry and the writer's responsibility to art and politics. Covers topics such as English or Irish lyric: 60s Heaney. Phonetics and feeling: from "Wintering Out" to "Field Work." The limbo of lost worlds: the Sweeney complex. Beyond the alphabet: "The Haw Lantern; Seeing Things." Heaney's 'Ars Poetica'; "Dante" and "The Government of the Tongue." For those interested in modern and contemporary poetry, and Irish literature.