Seamus Heaney's first collection of poems is an accessible and understated experiment in lyrical description. It was written in 1966 and what first strikes the contemporary is an adherence to metrical and rhyming (usually off-rhyming) patterns now considered undesirably strict. Much of the time Heaney smacks of Larkin - without (for this reader) the touch of Larkin's charismatic individuality. But one quickly appreciates the earnest craftsmanship of these poems. Indeed Heaney's characteristic equation of poetry with 'working', 'labouring', etc. is evident throughout these early pieces. 'Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests. / I'll dig with it.': there are many instances here of words being forged or moulded or indeed excavated to create a construct of sincere meaning. This is what poetry is all about. Heaney has a strong, unambiguously masculine voice that can, at times, sound like sixteenth-century verse ('Scaffolding' reads like a latterday metaphysical poem). Elsewhere - despite a perhaps enervating lack of humour and whimsicality (although, on consideration, it is by no means a total lack) - these poems sound confident, clear-sighted and sensitive in the way that farmers are (gruffly) sensitive.

The title poem of this collection, entitled "Death of a Naturalist," is one of my favorite poems of all time. It is absolutely breathtaking in its vivid depiction of nature ... it opens with "All year the flax-dam festered in the heart of the townland.."

Lines like "Bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell" (or equally muscular lines) are everywhere.

You see, smell, taste, and feel the mud, the heat, the humidity, and the animals, and how the speaker (who is part us) relates to all of it.

The shocking, heart-stopping last line is

"And I knew that if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it."

This poem is a sheer masterpiece in its imagery, its sensuousness, and its rhythms.

The whole book is wonderful. Another favorite poem of mine in this book is called, "Trout."

The hard, beautiful, colorful world of nature and physical life is deeply explored and rendered in Heaney's first book, which announced his poetic genius to the world.

I recommend this book to everybody.

Skeptical at first, it was required reading [in university] that turned out to be welcome reading. Not only are the poems very well written [as would be expected from a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature] but the way they are presented makes them all the more interesting. He approaches his own life, looking at his transition from childhood to adulthood and his decision of poetry over the rural life of his family.

Noteable poems in this volume include: Digging, Death of a Naturalist, The Early Surges, Lovers on Aran, Poem, and Synge on Aran. 34 poems in total.

Brodsky, Heaney, and Walcott helped me hear the music of Frost's poetry. They don't analyze all that many poems but the insights they offer open the door to others. For example, I learned about Frost's idea of "Sentence-Sounds" in Brodsky's review of "Home Burial" and his idea of the "Sounds of Sense" in Heaney's discussion of "Desert Places". Then when I read Frost's "To a Thinker", which does not appear in "Homage to Frost", I came across the line "...From sound to sense and back to sound", and of course I recognized a familiar theme. If you like Frost, this book makes a nice companion reader.

If you need to read one critical examination of Robert Frost, buy this & read Joseph Brodsky's fantastic, accessible take on "Home Burial". What a great book this is--three fine poets examining a brilliant poet. But it is Brodsky who best holds to the Frost credo--he speaks clearly and plainly.

I have to say that I was disappointed with this book. It seems less about the legends about the selkie folk and more about what the author thinks he might feel about such legends---it feels removed, remote, uncommitted. If he was really on search for the truth behind the stories, he didn't seem to be searching very hard, and he didn't seem to share his results particularly successfully, and I never really felt touched by any sense of Celtic other-worldliness---and that's what I was hoping for and waiting for. The introduction by Seamus Heaney was, alas, the best part of the book...

I was fifteen when I first read this book, in 1967. I had never heard any of the Selchie legends, and I was completely enchanted by them, and by Thomson's writing. He doesn't just retell these tales; he finds those people who still tell them, and lets them speak for themselves. We hear about how they lived then, and how they live now, showing how beautiful some of the old ways were, and how sad their loss is. I have re-read it many times since and, as I get older, I find more in it that speaks to me. It should be impossible to feel nostalgia for something you have never experienced, but Thomson has managed to fill me with that emotion. I'm thrilled that it is back in print again (my copy is worn thin!) and that the celebrated poet Seamus Heaney has written the new foreword.

This is one of the most marvelous (in all senses of the word) reading experiences I've had in a long time. Thomson's book was originally published in the 1950's, but had fallen out of print and was resurrected through the efforts of Seamus Heaney, a friend of the author's who also provides a very helpful introduction. As a child, Thomson became fascinated by legends of seals who transform themselves into human beings (or vice versa), and in pursuit of this interest he traveled into remote areas of Scotland and Ireland where these legends were still part of the living folk tradition. But in the 1940's the tradition was dying out: the educational system pressured children to speak English rather than Gaelic, and listening to the radio had superseded traditional entertainments such as storytelling. Thomson's chapters depict a way of life that was already disappearing; he conveys not only the stories themselves but the entire "flavor" of the storytelling -- the people who tell them, the phraseology they use, their audiences, and the smoky cottages and fishy seaside shacks where the stories are told. His summary of the seal legends is fascinating, but the greatest pleasure of the book, for me, was its evocation of the world in which the legends arose. I can't recommend this book highly enough. (Suggested listening to accompany the final chapter: "The Song of the Seals" from Matt Molloy's album "Shadows on Stone.")

Seamus Heaney is a fine poet, but with that said...

I just don't agree with awarding the Nobel Prize to an OK adaptation of mediocre play (look, even Shakespeare has some duds,) the message of which was put far more meaningfully and to a far broader audience in Star Trek II & III.

Re-read a great play like the Oedipus or check out Charles Mee's "Trojan Women: A Love Story" (available in his "History Plays",) or something by Brecht instead.

There's a reason they never taught you Philocetes in school- this is one should have stayed buried. Of value only for the specialist.

Sorry Seamus!

"The Cure at Troy," translated by Seamus Heaney offers a delightful translation of Sophocles' "Philoctetes." With a compelling tale from anchient times layed out before him, Heaney applies colloquial speach diction to the play. This accessability offers the audience a window into the basic moral struggle occuring at the heart of the work. A finly crafted story draws the reader to the characters. A worthwhile read.

Seamus Heaney pulls through again with his brilliant translation of Sophocles' Philoctetes. The tragic story of the forgotten hero, Philoctetes, provides a unique insight into the conflicts between personal moral beliefs and political calling. Odysseus persuades the heroic Neoptolemus into tricking the mamed Philoctetes into giving up the bow of Hercules. This act challenges the admired traits of the ancient world and draws into question the importance of personal beliefs. As each character represents a different aspect of the Greek world, a fight for beliefs - fidelity, pity, piety - endures. As for the translation itself, Heaney provides a beautiful interpretation of the story as seen in the words of the chorus:

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

This enriched translation strays slightly from the ancient text in order to enhance the understanding of the modern reader. Overall, this fast-moving play entices and enchants through a lyrical harmony like no other. Bravo, Seamus. Bravo.

Well, with the exception of a few quality lines like those in Cassandra, Whitby-sur-Moyola, and At Banagher, I'd have to say that the Spirit Level was (sad to say), for the most part, a waste of my time. But, instead of bashing it totally, I'll point out a few significant lines that I enjoyed and kept me from giving it one star.
From Cassandra:
"No such thing as innocent bystanding... no such thing as innocent."
From Whitby-sur-Moyola:
"...Unabsorbed in what he had to do/ But doing it perfectly, and watching you."
From At Banagher:
"Does he ever question what it all amounts to/ Or ever will? Or care where he lays his head?"
While I usually enjoy poetry, I had a VERY hard time getting into this book. It seems to me that a modern Irishman would have a few more quality poems, but maybe they are quality poems, but not being a modern Irishman, I can't understand them. But, I guess if he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, I'm probably the one who's mistaken. Perhaps I'm a little too surface to understand the intellectual depth of his poetry.

It is very easy to automatically compare Seamus Heaney with WB Yeats: they are both Irish, they both write about Irish legend and the Irish landscpae, yet the similaritiues stop there. In the first publications of poems from Heaney since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature he deals with subjects which strike a chord of sincerity for his reader, as was the case in many of his earlier poems, but this latest work is more stylistically controlled. This does not mean that he stays within a more limited framework, on the contrary, you feel that this collection is a fist hand demonstration of the growth of Heaney as a poet. He tackles the highly complex and political theme of the Ireland Troubles brilliantly in 'Mycenae Lookout', but then returns to the evocatively simple style that we find in 'St Kevin and the Blackbird'. The whle collection is so efforlessly skillful that you wonder why it took him so long to complete it. It is only after the second or third reading that the deeper complexities are absorbed. It is here that the reader may find some of the weaknesses of the collection. Heaney, although a master of his style, his poetry is not quite as intricate as, say TS Eliot, nor is it as impassioned or spontaneous as Beaudelaire (not that I am Heaney specifically to these poets alone, they too have their many weaknesses where Heaney excels). Despite this, Heaney is truly one of the best contemporary poets, and I personally feel he has many great works still to come.

This book by Heaney is a masterpiece, and it is the work of a master. Each poem stands on its own, each one a creation, formed and sculpted with what seems to be infinite precision, and great passion and care. Yet, the poems form a cohesive and powerful book that is central in its overall thrust.

A Spirit-Level is the carpenter's tool that contains a bubble in liquid, and is used to ensure that an object is level and balanced. And this book is about how we find or attempt to find balance between our personal lives, and the larger world in which we dwell.

These poems ring and resonate upon (and within) the reader.

"Mint" is one of my favorite poems in this book, and it is about how difficult it is to know which parts of ourselves, and which parts of the world, to value. It seems to suggest that we don't have a definitive answer to these concerns, and that therefore we should be cautious in deciding to disregard anything. It also seems to suggest that we should value everything in the world, on its own terms, and all of ourselves, in our own unique terms and ways. This is a poem alive with greenness, and with knowing.

"A Sofa in The Forties" is another powerful piece, about how we, in the innoncence of childhood, discover that we are riding on currents and mechanisms (history, society, technology, language, etc.) that are absorbing us into the world, and that we are becoming more and more of the world, and in a way, less and less the children we were.

Heaney has balanced this masterful book with a structure that enlivens, invigorates, and illuminates his central theme here, which is balance, indeed.

This book is a radiant masterpiece, and I recommend it to everybody.

Having listened to poets like T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings, and Ted Hughes give excellent readings of their work, the reinditions offered on this tape seem as banal as many of the poems, I'm sorry to say. Too many of the poets read with an awful, pseudo-low-brow academic accent- an exaggeration of the way Berryman and Lowell spoke- infusing flat poems with bland, artifical emotion. Listening to many of the poets on this tape read from other poets is disheartening: comparing Seamus Heaney reading Ted Hughes to Ted Hughes reading Ted Hughes, Frank Bidart reading Robert Lowell to Robert Lowell reading Robert Lowell, or (I can't remember who) reading John Berryman to John Berryman reading John Berryman highlights how mediocre most of the readings on this tape are. Nonetheless, I'd suppose that listening to poets read their work offers us an idea of how they'd like their work to be read, so this tape is an invaluable resource for connoiseurs of contemporary poetry- and, of course, many of the poems on this tape are quite good, although I think very few, if any, are extraordinary, and the quality of the readings is almost uniformly uninspiring. I would recommend instead tapes of T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, e.e. cummings, etc., or tapes of young up-and-coming poets who put more energy and intelligence into their poetry and their oratory.

This is an excellent compilation of poets reading their own work and the work of others not in attendance at this gala event. I learned much about poets who were unfamiliar to me, like Thom Gunn. The poems selected are great as are those of the poets assigned to each of the readers. Seamus Heaney is, as always, in great voice. Listen to "keeping going" and you will see what I mean.

I have reviewed over 60 different translations of Beowulf, . . . Although the Seamus Heaney translation is one of the best available, it is not, despite what all of the marketing people would have us believe, far superior to every other translation ever written. There are at least 10 other translations which rank with Seamus Heaney's translation. I would still rank Frederick Rebsamen's translation as superior to Heaney's.

Daniel Donoghue's choice of essays to include in this volume is interesting, in that he includes the 1934 essay by J. R. R. Tolkien "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", an essay which has already been made available in many other volumes, and the popularity of which, in my view, is now based mostly on nostalgia. Professor Donoghue has neglected to include any of the writings of Professor Kevin S. Kiernan, who has been described by the British Library as "the world's leading authority on the history of the Beowulf manuscript," and who is the world's leading proponent of the theory that the Beowulf manuscript may have been initially composed after 1016.

This book will undoubtedly be very popular, in that it contains the Beowulf translation which most people believe is the best one available, as well as several essays which related directly to the most popular topics for Beowulf essays: women in Beowulf, and Christian themes in Beowulf.

It is a good book, . . . but don't believe the marketing hype that tells you that you shouldn't bother with any other translation. Try Bertha Rogers, or Ruth Lehmann, or Frederick Rebsamen, or John Porter as well.

These poems connect the twenty first century reader with the Celtic past of Ireland, in a unique way: through the experience of the marauding Vikings. Wonderful poems with a mythic edge. Heaney is fantastic.

Fans of Heaney's Beowulf translation will find a great introduction to his work here in this accessible group of poems.

I don't know much about poetry, but as a fan of Irish culture, I decided to pick up this small collection. I was moved by the images. Heaney brought the past alive. I could picture the Vikings coming up the Shannon and storming Clen McNois and other monastries. Definately recommended!