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Title: Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney ISBN: 0-571-09024-9 Publisher: Faber & Faber Pub. Date: 01 August, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Exquisite, Breathtaking Poetry!
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Poetry as Hard Labour (in a Good Way)
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent collection of poetry!
Comment: 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.
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Title: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats by William Butler Yeats ISBN: 0684807319 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 09 September, 1996 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett ISBN: 0802130348 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Wintering out by Seamus Heaney ISBN: 0571101585 Publisher: Faber Pub. Date: 1972 List Price(USD): $6.00 |
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