Customer Reviews

Poems, 1965-1975: Death of a Naturalist / Door Into the Dark / Wintering Out / North

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Just a good read. As you would expect from Seamus Heaney. You can carry this book but Heaney can carry you. I strongly suggest this book to anyone interested in Irish poets/writers. I suggest this book for anyone interested in BOOKS!His imagery is deeper than most poets'. In the States _in school- we read Robert Frost and all that bunk. But Heaney's work is something completely different and even a bit unexpected at times. I love it.What else can I say?

Images of water and earth. often combined as mud or bogs, dominate these poems. Almost every one contains the words "dark" or "black." Many of them are memories of agricultural operations that sound so primitive (ploughing with horses, churning by hand) that I was not sure if they were genuine. (But should that make a difference? What if we learned that Seamus Heaney was born and raised in Manhattan? ). They are written in the colloquial style of the British "Movement" Some of them contain subtle rhymes and rhythms but some, such at the relatively cheerful "Churning Day" could just as well, or even better, be printed as chunks of prose. There is very little politics but it is evident that he writes as a Northern Itish Catholic.
It's the only book-length Heany I've read so I don't know how representative the selection is. It contains poems from "Death of a Naturalist," "Door Into the Dark." "Wintering Out," "A Northern Hoard," "North" and "Singing School."