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Electric Light: Poems

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Like any collection, there are highs and lows, but there are a few poems that would rank among Heaney's best in this collection. Moreso than his other collections, this one seems heavily weighted with the literary past. Heaney has always been interested in Irish history, but in this collection, he changes his focus to literary history and the immediate poetic past. In the last section of the book, 5 of the 9 poems are explicitly addressed to poets of Heaney's generation who have passed away. In that sense, the book is a bit pensive in tone, but it is enlivened by anecdote and word play. For Heaney fans, I recommend it, but if you are new to his work, you'd be better off with one of his Selected Works (I think he's published 3), or an early to mid-career book.

With "Electric Light", Seamus Heaney steps over, or rather blurs, the boundary between poet and audience. Although some of his earlier work has dealt with poetry from the writer's perspective, numerous works in this book are addressed to, dedicated to, or in memory of (and in some cases all three) other poets. At times, this can give this collection a somewhat elegiac tone, but Heaney's powerful, careful and affecting use of the English language shines throughout, particularly in "Audenesque", which manages to be a tribute to Auden, an elegy for Joseph Brodsky, and a fine exercise in meter and rhythm all in one.

As with previous collections, Heaney's memories of his childhood and youth in Ireland are cleverly intermixed with classical allusion and earthy modern notes. Overall, the tone of "Electric Light" is darker than that of, say "The Spirit Level" (the title poem, for example, has more substance and less enticing whimsy than his previous "A Sofa in the Forties") but this merely allows moments of fun, such as his "Glosses" - ten short pieces on various subjects- "The Real Names" and "Red, White, and Blue" to stand out more clearly than they might have otherwise.

Heaney has written and spoken eloquently on the "redress of poetry"- the purpose, the need and the drive of poetry to serve as a medium of communication and conversation in the modern, larger world as well as the classical, academic one. With its juxtaposition of poetic in-jokes, everyday observation and personal but not private reminiscence, "Electric Light" strikes a kind balance between these two worlds.

If Seamus Heaney was a recording artist instead of a poet, the poems of Electric Light would be B-sides: many of them are well-executed, all of them have elements of the linguistic verve and elegance for which Heaney is renowned, but none of them are stick-out spectacular. That is, if Heaney's already spectacular body of work is setting the par.
Poems such as "Montana" are concise stories that lyrically weave the nature of a person, a relationship, and the past together with lines that make good fodder for a week or two's rolling over in the mind: "Even then he was like an apparition/ A rambler from the Free State and a gambler/ All eyes as the pennies rose and slowed/ On Sunday mornings"; others, like "Perch" are meanderings into the sonic quality of words, without so much as coherent sentence: "Guzzling the Current, against it, all muscle and slur/ In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air/ That is water". But other poems are, for Heaney, largely unexceptional.
Electric Light is a good collection of poems for a lazy Sunday afternoon: there are plenty of poems to contemplate poolside, but not enough hits for this collection of b-sides to go platinum.

This was Heaney's first book of original verse after completing his sublime translation of Beowulf. If you love his rendering of that epic poem as much as I do, you will share my delight when you discover allusions to Beowulf and reflections on the translation process sitting snugly in poems throughout Electric Light.

In this collection of poems Heaney goes back to his childhood memories of discoveries and fantasies. Some are amusing fantasies that are fun and possibly not unique to Heaney. For example in "Out of the Bag" he dwells on the idea that little children are constructed from infant parts carried into the delivery room in the doctor's black bag. Other poems are about remembering childhood discoveries, such as the magic of electricity in "Electric Light", which ends the book. Heaney has fun in "Audenesque", in which he writes "Its measured ways I tread again/ Quatrain by constrained quatrain, / Meting grief and reason out/ As you said a poem ought." Some of the poems should be read aloud to catch the sounds of the words, particularly the wonderful neologisms. Overall the mood is mellow and lacks the passion of the earlier works, such as those published in the collection of selected poems from 1966-1996 called "Opened Ground".

After last year's bestselling success of Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, renowned author Seamus Heaney now brings us his latest collection of poetry, entitled Electric Light. The collection is split into two sections: a) sweeping poetry, starting off in Heaney's homeland of Ireland, and then traveling all over the world, from Belgrade to Greece, and b) moving poetry dedicated to those who have passed away like Ted Hughes and Joseph Brodsky. Offering fresh language, as well as plenty of his own style, Heaney takes the reader on a most unique journey.

"At Toomebridge"

Where the flat water
Came pouring over the weird out of Lough Neagh
As if it had reached an edge of the flat earth
And fallen shining to the continuous
Present of the Bann

Where the checkpoint used to be.
Where the rebel boy was hanged in '98.
Where negative ions in the open air
Are poetry to me. As once before
The Slime and silver of the fattened eel.

"To the Shade of Zbigniew Herbert"

You were one of those from the back of the north wind
Whom Apollo favoured and would keep going back to
In the winter season.
And among your people you
Remained his herald whenever he'd departed
And the land was silent and summer's promise thwarted.
You learnt the lyre from him and kept it tuned.

Originally published on October 8th 2001 ©Alex C. Telander.

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

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the latest collection of poetry from seamus heaney isn't his best work. in fact, if you aren't familiar with his work you'd do better starting with opened ground. there is a pensive tone throughout the collection, and the entire second half is written for recently dead poets. when you read this you can see why he won the nobel, but i'd wait to read this after you've gone through his selected poems. and here are some other poets you may enjoy: dylan thomas, yeats, robert frost, r.s. gwynn, david mason

This is why people win Nobels. This is why the award even exists. Thank once again, Mr. Heaney.

This is a tremendous book. Heaney writes with such power and precision. He is a wonderful poet. His work has a universality which is so rare in US poetry. As he gets older his work just gets better and better.

Visit the following URL for my review of Electric Light:

http://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/heaney.htm