The Spirit Level: Poems [Hardcover]

Seamus Heaney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 1996

In this collection, as ever with Heaney, personal memory and humble domestic objects -- a whitewash brush, a sofa, a swing -- are endowed with talismanic significance, and throughout the collection he addresses his growing concerns, which inevitably include the political situation in his native Northern Ireland, in a poetry that never ceases to be fluid, alert, and completely truthful.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The title of Seamus Heaney's first collection of poetry since winning the Nobel Prize in 1995 is the term used in Ireland for a carpenter's level, an earthy physical allusion to matters of spirit that is quintessential Heaney. And indeed this volume deals masterfully with the finding of a level balancing point in ethical, moral, and spiritual affairs. Heaney has famously likened his craft to the farming activities of his childhood, comparing his pen to his father's spade; here he extends that analogy, comparing the lines of a poem to furrows being plowed in the earth, and "the poem as ploughshare that turns time/ Up and over." Heaney's furrows are straight and clean, his loamy lines abundantly fertile.

From Publishers Weekly

As the title suggests, this new collection from the 1995 winner of the Nobel Prize is a study in balance. Heaney reveals how simple things, such as a thimble or a swing, can hold the weight of history-and how history can alter the emotional weight of an object. "Two Lorries" takes the romantic innocence of a coalman's truck, circa 1940, with its driver who stops to flirt with the poet's mother, and measures it against a present-day "heavier, deadlier one, set to explode." Meanwhile, the poems revel in wordplay. A favorite tactic is the repetition of words within a lines or stanzas, which can yield such simplicity as in "Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard," or be as savvy as a politico's speech: "Like the disregarded ones we turned against/ Because we'd failed them by our disregard." Heaney, at the peak of his career, is the fulcrum of two Irelands: one that is lyrical and lush with tradition and love; another that is ticking and could "catch the heart off guard and blow it open."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 81 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st American ed edition (June 30, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374267790
• ISBN-13: 978-0374267797
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #376,489 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poetry which catches the heart, July 9, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Spirit Level: Poems (Hardcover)

Seamus Heaney's The Spirit Level is another meticulously
crafted collection of spirited poems by the winner of the
1995 Nobel Prize for Literature. Heaney never disappoints.
He brings to quite small poems, such as his lyrical
reflection on mint, the same intense gaze which illuminates
his poems dealing with the more complex concerns of
religious faith and history. His poetry, while deeply
embedded in the traditions of Irish writing, constantly
surprises the reader with its flashes of sheer contemporary
intelligence and language. The way Heaney effortlessly weds
these has created a formidable and distinct poetic voice.
For me, some of the most memorable poems in this collection
are from the sequence, "Mycenae Lookout", a re-telling of
the Trojan Wars. These display his easy shifts from a
contemporary imagination to one equally informed by history.
In his own words from the final poem of this collection,
"Postcript", Heaney can "catch the heart off guard and
blow it open". A must for any serious poetry lover.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A rare work from one of this generation's greatest, April 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Spirit Level: Poems (Hardcover)

It is very easy to automatically compare Seamus Heaney with WB Yeats: they are both Irish, they both write about Irish legend and the Irish landscpae, yet the similaritiues stop there. In the first publications of poems from Heaney since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature he deals with subjects which strike a chord of sincerity for his reader, as was the case in many of his earlier poems, but this latest work is more stylistically controlled. This does not mean that he stays within a more limited framework, on the contrary, you feel that this collection is a fist hand demonstration of the growth of Heaney as a poet. He tackles the highly complex and political theme of the Ireland Troubles brilliantly in 'Mycenae Lookout', but then returns to the evocatively simple style that we find in 'St Kevin and the Blackbird'. The whle collection is so efforlessly skillful that you wonder why it took him so long to complete it. It is only after the second or third reading that the deeper complexities are absorbed. It is here that the reader may find some of the weaknesses of the collection. Heaney, although a master of his style, his poetry is not quite as intricate as, say TS Eliot, nor is it as impassioned or spontaneous as Beaudelaire (not that I am Heaney specifically to these poets alone, they too have their many weaknesses where Heaney excels). Despite this, Heaney is truly one of the best contemporary poets, and I personally feel he has many great works still to come.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The natural world observed and balanced, November 6, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Spirit Level: Poems (Paperback)

I wish I could say I liked or understood these poems more than I do. Seamus Heaney is a Nobel- Prize winning, and most highly regarded poet. This volume is the first which appeared after he received the Nobel Prize. The 'spirit level' is a reference to a carpenter's tool used to level things off. The collection is supposedly built in one sense around the idea of 'balance', material and spiritual balance.

The first thing that struck me about the poetry is the richness of its vocabulary, the frequency of neologism. Heaney was a student of Anglo- Saxon , and his translation of 'Beowulf' is considered one of the best. Clearly he has a mastery of the language and its rhythms . And he has a strong sense too of the observed natural world. A lot of his lines are lines of precise seeing .

"And some time make the time to drive out west

Into Country Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,

In September or October, when the wind

And the light are working off each other

So that the ocean on one side is wild

With foam and glitter, and inland among stones

The surface of a slate- grey lake is lit

By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,

Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,

Their fully grown headstrong- looking heads

Tucked or cresting or busy underwater."

Again this is powerful and precise observation, and clear strong language.

Nonetheless in reading the poems I did not get from them what I do get from the poetry of his great countryman , Yeats. Yeats is filled with memorable lines and a music which sings, rings and lingers in the mind.

Heaney is intellectually complex and scholarly. Aside from my difficulty in just understanding the plain sense , the music , as I read the poems aloud somehow escapes me.

Yet I am very well aware that I am probably talking more about my own limitations , rather than Heaney's.