100 Poems

by Seamus Heaney

Overview

Selected poems from a Nobel laureate

In 100 Poems, readers will enjoy the most loved and celebrated poems, and will discover new favorites, from "The Cure at Troy" to "Death of a Naturalist." It is a singular and welcoming anthology, reaching far and wide, for now and for years to come.

Seamus Heaney had the idea to make a personal selection of poems from across the entire arc of his writing life, a collection small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to do this himself, but now, finally, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family. No other selection of Heaney’s poems exists that has such a broad range, drawing from the first to the last of his prizewinning collections.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374538972
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	173,615
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was born in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966 and was followed by numerous volumes of poetry, plays, criticism, and translation, establishing him as one of the leading English-language poets of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His translation of Virgil’s Aeneid Book VI was published posthumously in 2016 to great critical acclaim.

Table of Contents

Contents

Family Note

Digging

Death of a Naturalist

Blackberry-Picking

Follower

Mid-Term Break

The Diviner

Twice Shy

Scaffolding

Personal Helicon

The Forge

The Peninsula

Requiem for the Croppies

Night Drive

The Given Note

Bogland

Anahorish

Broagh

The Other Side

The Tollund Man

Wedding Day

Westering

Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication

1 Sunlight

2 The Seed Cutters

Funeral Rites

The Grauballe Man

Punishment

from Whatever You Say Say Nothing

from Singing School

1 The Ministry of Fear

2 A Constable Calls

4 Summer 1969

6 Exposure

Oysters

A Drink of Water

The Strand at Lough Beg

Casualty

The Singer’s House

Elegy

from Glanmore Sonnets

The Otter

The Skunk

Song

The Harvest Bow

In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge

The Underground

A Hazel Stick for Catherine Ann

A Kite for Michael and Christopher

The Railway Children

from Station Island

Alphabets

The Haw Lantern

from the Republic of Conscience

The Stone Verdict

from Clearances

The Wishing Tree

from The Cure at Troy

Markings

Seeing Things

I.I.87

Field of Vision

from Glanmore Revisited

A Pillowed Head

Fosterling

from Lightenings

from Crossings

The Rain Stick

A Sofa in the Forties

Keeping Going

Two Lorries

St Kevin and the Blackbird

The Gravel Walks

A Call

A Dog Was Crying Tonight in Wicklow Also

At the Wellhead

At Banagher

Postscript

from Out of the Bag

The Clothes Shrine

from Sonnets from Hellas

Anahorish 1944

Anything Can Happen

Helmet

District and Circle

Midnight Anvil

The Lift

Höfn

Tate’s Avenue

The Blackbird of Glanmore

‘Had I not been awake’

The Conway Stewart

Chanson d’Aventure

Miracle

Human Chain

from Route 110

‘The door was open and the house was dark’

In the Attic

A Kite for Aibhín

In Time

Index

Editorial Reviews

"100 Poems—a short, career-spanning selection—completes a project that Heaney began during his lifetime. Compiled by Heaney’s 'immediate family,' with a preface by his daughter Catherine, it highlights his work as a poet of friendship and family, of careful and long-felt affiliation, not only to land and language but to the people who stayed with him throughout the decades. . . . as 100 Poems emphasizes, for any of his admirers who have not noticed—Heaney remained a poet of attachments."—Stephanie Burt, The New Yorker

“Most great poets leave behind a fistful of classic poems. Heaney’s oeuvre is so vast and varied there’s an even hundred, from the sad realism of “Wedding” to “Clearances,” his poignant poem about potato peeling with his mother, to “Digging,” the credo of any seeker with a pen and a history to uncover. They’re all collected here in one handy handsome volume, the new best selection of his work yet.” –John Freeman, Literary Hub

From the Publisher