The Letters of Seamus Heaney

by Seamus Heaney, Christopher Reid (Editor)

Overview

The letters provide us with an intimate, multilayered understanding of this extraordinary poet’s life and mind.

Every now and again I need to get down here, to get into the Diogenes tub, as it were, or the Colmcille beehive hut, or the Mossbawn scullery. At any rate, a hedge surrounds me, the blackbird calls, the soul settles for an hour or two.

In this astute selection from Seamus Heaney’s vast correspondence, we are given direct access to the life and poetic development of a literary titan, from his early days in Belfast, through his controversial decision to settle in the Republic, to the gradual broadening of horizons that culminated in the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the years of international eminence that kept him heroically busy until his death.

Christopher Reid draws from both public and private archives to reveal this remarkable story in the poet’s own words. Generous, funny, exuberant, confiding, irreverent, empathetic, and deeply thoughtful, The Letters of Seamus Heaney encompasses decades-long relationships with friends and colleagues, as well as an unstinted responsiveness to passing acquaintances.

Heaney’s mastery of language is as evident here as it is in any of his writings; listening to his voice we find ourselves in the same room as a man whose presence enriched the world and whose legacy deepens our sense of what truly matters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374185299
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/10/2024
Pages:	848
Sales rank:	69,104
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.70(d)

About the Author

Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. His poems, plays, translations, and essays include Opened Ground, Electric Light, Beowulf, The Spirit Level, District and Circle, and Finders Keepers. Robert Lowell praised Heaney as the "most important Irish poet since Yeats."

Christopher Reid is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary, University of London. A former poetry editor at Faber and Faber, he worked with Ted Hughes on Tales of Ovid and Birthday Letters among other books. A Costa Award-winning poet, Christopher is the author of A Scattering and Anniversary and The Song of Lunch.

Editorial Reviews

"An epistolary cornucopia. The Letters of Seamus Heaney contains an abundance of insight and illumination, literary gossip and appraisal, playfulness and cogency, all bound up with a steadfast attention to the feelings and expectations of each correspondent. " —Patricia Craig, TLS

"The portrait of Heaney that emerges in The Letters of Seamus Heaney, edited diligently and sympathetically by Christopher Reid, is of a man always tussling between duty and freedom." —Declan Ryan, Poetry Foundation

"The 700-plus pages of The Letters of Seamus Heaney, beautifully edited by Christopher Reid, contain numerous fascinating themes and subplots. . . We see the poet, for example, first getting his hands on a copy of P. V. Glob’s The Bog People, the book whose account of exhumed Iron Age bodies in Denmark would trigger “The Tollund Man” and, in time, half of the poems in North." —James Parker, The Atlantic

From the Publisher

2024-04-30
The great Irish poet’s letters create a buoyant and complex portrait of a life in art.

Selected by Reid from Heaney’s voluminous correspondence, these letters span his professional and personal relationships. Addressed to editors, close friends, fellow poets (Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, and Elizabeth Bishop), and others, the work is by turns funny, serious, and considerate; readers will marvel at the consistent compassion and care Heaney showed his varied recipients. In a letter to Hughes about Hughes’ new book, Heaney writes, “I feel the shape of the story was a plough that got deep into the ground of your gift and opened it marvellously. The abundance of the thing from line to line is a blessing.” On another occasion, he writes playfully to a friend, “Suddenly my patter halts. I have fathomed the pit of patter. I grow less fit and fatter. Am I fit to be a father? The farther this fares, the more futile it feels.” Via these lively and kind musings, readers gain a satisfying sense of Heaney’s life, including early financial stress (“at my back I always hear the Bank of Ireland hurrying near,” he wrote in 1977), his literary confidence, and the status of his many works in progress, passages that provide a deeper understanding of his poetry. There’s surprises, as well—e.g., a letter in verse to the editors of “the new Penguin of British verse,” in which he drives home his Irish identity: “But don’t be surprised / if I demure, for, be advised / “My passport’s green. / No glass of ours was ever raised / To toast The Queen.” In these warm, compassionate, and humorous entries, admirers of Heaney will find much to learn and enjoy—even if general readers may get lost in the literary thickets.

An anthology full of insight and delight.

Kirkus Reviews