In recent years Seamus Heaney has earned the reputation of being ‘the most important Irish poet since Yeats’. In this book, originally published in 1982, Blake Morrison identifies the central characteristics of his achievement, uncovering the sources of Heaney’s poems, placing his work within both Irish and Anglo-American traditions and explaining his poetry’s complex relation to the political troubles in Northern Ireland. A lively, personal and carefully researched account by a writer who is himself a poet and critic, this book forcefully challenges some of the myths surrounding Heaney’s work and places it in proper perspective.
1.Introduction 2. The Gag of Place: Death of a Naturalist and Door Into the Dark 3. The Guttural Muse: Wintering Out and Stations 4. The Ground Possessed: North 5. The Hedge-School: Field Work.
Biography
Blake Morrison
Original Review of Seamus Heaney:
‘His book is a model of what this kind of introduction ought to be: informative, lucid, unposturing, very good at the difficult art of choosing passages for quotation, skilful in explaining occasional obscurities without intrusive exegetical fuss, and sensitive and authoritative in judgment.’ The Times Literary Supplement
