Items related to Death of a Naturalist
Poems deal with fathers, the past, mortality, nature, violence, school, rural life, love, fear, and childhood.
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First published in 1966, this debut collection by Seamus Heaney signals the talent that was to win him the Nobel Prize in 1995. Largely addressing his rural childhood in County Derry, the volume begins with "Digging", a poem which encapsulates Heaney's early concerns about roots, belonging and the supple joy of language. As he watches his father digging the flowerbed, he recalls him working the potato drills and lines of turf 20 years before. "By God, the old man could handle a spade. / Just like his old man." Heaney is renowned for getting inside language and revelling in its sensual glut. He talks of "the squelch and slap / Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge / Through living roots." He too severs roots, being the first generation not to depend on the land. "But I've no spade to follow men like them. / Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I'll dig with it." Heaney has the bewildering genius of being loose and tight at the same time, conversational and colloquial as well as formally rigorous. He's equally at home and as wildly inventive in blank and rhyming verse. In Death of a Naturalist, he takes the reader to the festering flax-dam where "bluebottles / Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell" and he gathered "the warm thick slobber / Of frogspawn." He delights in excess, in textures--"a glossy purple clot" of ripe blackberry, its flesh like "thickened wine". "For the Commander of the Eliza" is savage in its depiction of the famine: "Six grown men with gaping mouths and eyes / Bursting the sockets like spring onions in drills." The captain of the ship refuses to give out food on Whitehall's orders. In "At a Potato Digging", Heaney compares contemporary potato-gatherers at their "seasonal altar of the sod" and the piles of spuds, "live skulls, blind-eyed" to those who "wolfed the blighted root and died". He renders the famine unavoidably stark and present. Almost every poem demonstrates his resourceful, elastic use of language and Heaney ably achieves what he aims to do: "I rhyme / To see myself, to set the darkness echoing." -- Cherry Smyth
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The classic collection reissued in a beautiful new hardback edition.
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- PublisherFaber & Faber
- Publication date1966
- ISBN 10 0571066658
- ISBN 13 9780571066650
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages57
- Rating
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Death of a Naturalist
Published by
Faber & Faber Ltd
(1966)
ISBN 10: 0571066658
ISBN 13: 9780571066650
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Hardcover
Quantity: 1
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Book Description Condition: Poor. This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has hardback covers. In poor condition, suitable as a reading copy. No dust jacket. Rebound by the library. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,250grams, ISBN:0571066658. Seller Inventory # 8854300
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Death of a Naturalist
Published by
Faber & Faber
(1970)
ISBN 10: 0571066658
ISBN 13: 9780571066650
Used
Softcover
Quantity: 1
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Book Description Condition: Poor. This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has soft covers. Book contains pen & pencil markings. In poor condition, suitable as a reading copy. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,250grams, ISBN:0571066658. Seller Inventory # 8697276
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Death of a Naturalist
Published by
Faber & Faber
(1970)
ISBN 10: 0571066658
ISBN 13: 9780571066650
Used
Hardcover
Quantity: 1
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Book Description Condition: Good. This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has hardback covers. Clean from markings In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,250grams, ISBN:0571066658. Seller Inventory # 9618602
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DEATH OF A NATURALIST (First edition - third impression)
Published by
Faber and Faber, 3 Queen Square, London
(1966)
ISBN 10: 0571066658
ISBN 13: 9780571066650
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Hardcover
First Edition
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. A third impression of the true first edition of Seamus Heaney's first full collection, published in 1966 - the same year as the first impression. ***Near fine in emerald-green cloth-covered boards, with gilt titles to the spine. The gilt is still beautifully bright, and the boards are clean and unmarked. No bumps or creases to the boards. Corners sharp. No reading lean to the binding and no warping to the thin boards (as is sometimes found). Internally also near fine, with no inscriptions or annotations. No major creases or tears - just very light creasing to a few leaves at the top corner - please note that this is not very noticeable. Pages clean. Spine tight. ***In a near fine original printed dustwrapper, which has not been price-clipped, retaining the original publisher's printed price of 18s net. The dustwrapper is complete, with just very slight rubbing and loss at the head and tail of the spine, and a small closed tear at the bottom edge of the back panel. The dustwrapper is really clean, with just a couple of small marks to the front panel. The back panel, which is white, is clean and unmarked. Unusually, there is virtually no fading to the light-sensitive green and pink colours on the spine, which is extremely uncommon with this title. ***224mm x 142mm. 57 pages. ***'His words give us the soil-reek of Ireland, the colourful violence of his childhood on a farm in Derry. The full-blooded energy of these poems makes "Death of a Naturalist" the best first book of poems I've read for some time.' (C. B. Cox in the Spectator) ***'The power and precision of his best poems are a delight, and as a first collection "Death of a Naturalist" is outstanding.' (Christopher Ricks in the New Statesman) ***'What delights, in poem after poem, is the accuracy and freshness with which sense-impressions are recorded.' (Richard Kell in the Guardian) ***'I have completely persuaded myself that he is a poet of unusual quality, a poet to be grateful for.' (Karl Miller in The Critics, BBC) - Review quotes taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper. ***A third impression of "Death of a Naturalist", Seamus Heaney's first poetry collection, in really nice collectable condition, with an unusually unfaded dustwrapper. Of interest to collectors of Seamus Heaney's poetry. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc. Seller Inventory # 8172x
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