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Authors
:
Seamus
Heaney
There
is no Collected Poems, but New Selected Poems 1966-1987, 1988,
is quite generous and includes selections from the otherwise
hard-to-find Stations. The individual volumes (important ones
starred) are:
*Death
of a Naturalist, 1966; *Door into the Dark, 1969; *Wintering
Out, 1972; *North, 1975; Field Work, 1979; *Station Island,
1984; *The Haw Lantern, 1987; *Seeing Things, 1991; The Spirit
Level,1995. The prose-poems of Stations, 1975, have never
been published in England; they are strongly influenced by
Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns.
Heaney
has translated from the Irish Sweeney Astray, 1983, revised
and enlarged as Sweeney's Flight, 1992 [828 HEA Quarto]. The
Cure at Troy, 1990, is a version of Sophocles's Philoctetes.
In 1995, he published with Stanislaw Baranczak a translation
from the Polish of the baroque Laments of Jan Kochanowski.
Dante has been an important influence and individual volumes
present translated episodes. He has also been translating
Beowulf.
There
are three collections of critical work: Preoccupations: Selected
Prose 1968-1978, 1980, which contains significant personal
material; The Government of the Tongue, 1988, and The Redress
of Poetry, 1995, which brings together his lectures as Professor
of Poetry at Oxford. Do not confuse the last with The Redress
of Poetry, 1990, which is a pamphlet only containing his inaugural
lecture as Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Ted Hughes has been
a major influence; Heaney and Hughes edited together the excellent
anthology of poetry for children, The Rattle Bag, 1985 [820.108
RAT].
Classmarks
for Royal Holloway library are given in square brackets. To
check our holdings of these books, and to reserve items on
short loan, log
into ALEPH here.
Heaney's
predecessors in modern Irish poetry include Patrick Kavanagh
and John Montague. His contemporaries include Derek Mahon
and Michael Longley. For critical work on Heaney, see:
- Michael
Allen, ed., Seamus Heaney, 1997. A 'New Casebook'; the choice
of essays is good.
- Tony
Curtis, ed., The Art of Seamus Heaney, 1985 [828 HEA/C].
On the whole a good collection of essays. See the piece
by Ciaran Carson especially.
- Neil
Corcoran, Seamus Heaney, 1986 [828 HEA/C]. The best general
account.
- Blake
Morrison, Seamus Heaney, 1982 [828 HEA/M]. Shorter than
Corcoran, from an earlier point in time.
- Edna
Longley, '"Inner Emigre" or "Artful Voyeur": Seamus Heaney's
North', Poetry in the Wars, 1986 [828.19358 LON]. From the
Protestant tradition.
- Elmer
Andrews, The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: All the Realms of
Whisper, 1988 [Univ.Lib.].
- Bernard
O'Donoghue, Seamus Heaney and the Language of Poetry, 1994
[828 HEA/O]. A scholar-poet on a scholar-poet.
- Henry
Hart, Seamus Heaney: Poet of Contrary Progressions, New
York 1992.
- Andrew
Murphy, Seamus Heaney, 1996. A good short account.
- Helen
Vendler, The Breaking of Style: Hopkins, Heaney, Graham,
Cambridge, Mass. 1995. The chapter on Heaney is excellent,
as are her other writings on Heaney.
- Helen
Vendler, 'Seamus Heaney', The Music of What Happens,Cambridge,
Mass., 1988.
- Helen
Vendler, 'Second Thoughts: Seamus Heaney's The Haw Lantern',
'A Wounded Man Falling Towards Me: Seamus Heaney's The Government
of the Tongue', 'Earth and Ethereality:Seamus Heaney's Selected
Poems 1966-1987', Soul Says: On Recent Poetry, Cambridge
Mass., 1995.
Follow
this link to the Seamus
Heaney pages on the Internet Poetry Archive, which includes
the full texts of poems and other useful biographical and
bibliographical materials.
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