Seamus Heaney (Modern Masters) - Softcover

Vendler, Helen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006388841 ISBN 13: 9780006388845

Publisher: Fontana Press, 1999

Synopsis

A dazzling short assessment of the life and work of the poet and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for literature, by one of the finest literary critics now writing.

In awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Seamus Heaney in 1995, the committee recognized a lifetime of beautiful and profound writing, beloved by readers around the world.

Among Heaney’s many published collections are Death of a Naturalist, North, Field Work, Rattle Bag, Station Island and, most recently, the bestselling Spirit Level (May 1996). Yet despite his popularity, Heaney’s poetry can be difficult and intractable, not least because it is linked to two rich literary traditions, the English and the Irish.

The time is ripe for a clear, explicatory work that relates the poet to his work. Helen Vendler’s beautifully written book will do precisely this.

About this title

Review:

İA¨ luminous new study...One of America's foremost poetry critics, İVendler¨ disagrees with critics who stress İHeaney's¨ poetry's political content, focusing instead on the poetry as 'aesthetic and intellectual experiments.' -- Jonathan Allison "The Monitor"

İHelen Vendler's¨ reading of Heaney is a marvelously illuminating achievement...Most magically of all, İthis book¨ manages, while rejecting engagement on the 'thematic' level, to be constantly stimulating towards other readings while it entertains. -- Bernard O'Donoghue "Essays in Criticism"

Perhaps no late 20th-century poet feels the poignantly complex responsibilities of literary vocation as deeply as Seaumus Heaney, and with this book Vendler proves that no reader of his work is better attuned to those concerns. Following last year's widely admired "The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets," her intelligent, lively and reflective exploration of the first three decades of the Nobel laureate's career succeeds in many tasks: it is both an admiring, readable introduction and an anthology of best poems, and it builds an important case for attending to stylistic innovations while still addressing Heaney's relation to Northern Ireland's troubles.

Quiet virtuosity sustains this work from one of our leading literary critics...While steadfastly attentive to the words before her, Vendler shows herself to be agreeably imaginative; also, remarkably, she's a critic whose powers sometimes seem akin to those of her subjects. But she serves, too, as a loyal and true intermediary between poetry and its potential readers, offering a concise, plainspoken companion volume to Heaney's "oeuvre" without making the work seem more--or less--difficult than it really is. Her unusual fairness in an age when criticism is often either politically motivated or too arcane in its language and concepts to be read widely should be noted (and noted again). Would that there were more Vendlers writing criticism--and not about poetry alone.

The task İHelen Vendler¨ sets herself in this book is to demonstrate exactly how, by various means and in answer to a range of provocations, artistic, historic, and personal, the remarkable growth and development of Heaney's poetry over the last thirty years has been achieved...It is difficult to imagine a critic more in tune with her subject. Alert to the part played by etymological knowledge and wit in Heaney's work, she is also, thanks to her Irish Catholic upbringing, able to clarify for the uninstructed the meaning of his liturgical references. The political dimensions of Heaney's work, the 'dolorous circumstances' of Ireland, are referred to where necessary with restraint, compassion, and brevity...İHelen Vendler is¨ our period's most distinguished literary critic. -- Ann Cobb "Harvard Review"

towards other readings while it entertains.

familial. Her book is a triumph for the poet and the reader.

to understand his masterly use of sound, symbol, imagery and parable.

restraint, compassion, and brevity...[Helen Vendler is] our period's most distinguished literary critic.

'to grasp and perpetuate, by symbolic form, the self's volatile and transient here and now'...[An] illuminating orientation.

From the Back Cover:

Seamus Heaney has dealt unflinchingly with the relationship between the personal and political, the aesthetic and the ethical, over four decades, in work firmly rooted in both the English and Irish literary traditions: his 1995 Nobel Prize fitting recognition of his poetic family farm in Derry. His first collection of poems, 'Death of a Naturalist' (1966), drew heavily upon this rural background for its earthy imagery. But as Northern Ireland descended into violence after 1968, into “a quarter century of life waste and spirit waste”, Heaney was forced to become a poet of public as well as private life, a role whose pressures are reflected in the darkness of works such as the 'North' and 'Station Island'. Helen Vendler traces his development as a poet from 1966 onwards, pausing to look closely at individual poems and at Heaney’s political and literary heritage. An acclaimed poetry critic, Vendler brings to the reader a sense of Heaney’s struggle to be both socially responsible and creatively free, while explaining “as much to myself as to others the power of his extraordinary poetry.”

“Vendler’s 'Heaney' serves as a wonderfully succint road map to the poet’s verse, illuminating the effect that both private and public events have had on the development of his work, while explicating the continual evolution of his style. She shows us how Heaney has pushed the boundaries of the traditional lyric poem in his efforts to articulate his changing vision of the world, even as she helps us to understand his masterly use of sound, symbol, imagery and parable.”
MICHIKO KAKUTANI, 'New York Times'

“A compact study that traces the full arc of Heaney’s career with lurid efficiency ... close readings emphasise the literary ancestry of individual poems.”
EDWARD MENDLESON, 'New York Times Book Review'

About this edition

• Publisher: Fontana Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0006388841
• ISBN 13: 9780006388845
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208