Most Popular Books by Seamus Heaney

This definitive collection of Seamus Heaney''s poetry, published in a single volume for the first time, gives us the full arc of the Nobel laureate''s long and varied career. Seamus Heaney''s voice is like no other—"by turns mythological and journalistic, rural and sophisticated, reminiscent and impatient, stern and yielding, curt and expansive" (Helen Vendler, The New Yorker). Published in a single volume for the first time, the collected poems of Heaney is a testament to that unforgettable voice, and to the breadth and beauty of the Nobel laureate''s long and brilliant career, from his first book, Death of a Naturalist (1966), to poems written for Human Chain (2010), his twelfth and final book.

Death of a Naturalist (1966) marked the auspicious debut of Seamus Heaney, a universally acclaimed master of modern literature. As a first book of poems, it is remarkable for its accurate perceptions and rich linguistic gifts.

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.

The most loved and celebrated poems—from "The Cure at Troy" to "Death of a Naturalist"—by the Nobel Prize–winning poet. 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. Praise for Seamus Heaney "Works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." —Nobel Prize in Literature, 1995 "Heaney''s voice, by turns mythological and journalistic, rural and sophisticated, reminiscent and impatient, stern and yielding, curt and expansive, is one of a suppleness almost equal to consciousness itself." —Helen Vendler "His is ''close-up'' poetry . . . close up to thought, to the world, to the emotions. Few writers at work today, in verse or fiction, can give the sense of rich, fecund, lived life that Heaney does." —John Banville "More than any other poet since Wordsworth he can make us understand that the outside world is not outside, but what we are made of." —John Carey "The poet who has shown the finest art in presenting a coherent vision of Ireland, past and present." —Richard Murphy

With this collection, first published in 1975, Heaney located a myth which allowed him to articulate a vision of Ireland--its people, history, and landscape--and which gave his poems direction, cohesion, and cumulative power. In North, the Irish experience is refracted through images drawn from different parts of the Northern European experience, and the idea of the north allows the poet to contemplate the violence on his home ground in relation to memories of the Scandinavian and English invasions which have marked Irish history so indelibly.

Heaney''s new collection of poetry maintains his trust in the implacableness of workaday realities and the mystery of everyday renewals.

Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney''s first collection of prose, Preoccupations, begins with a vivid account of his early years on his father''s farm in Northern Ireland and his coming of age as a student and teacher in Belfast. Subsequent essays include critical work on Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Robert Lowell, William Butler Yeats, John Montague, Patrick Kavanagh, Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, and Philip Larkin.

Collection of poems by the 1995 Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet.

The title poem of this collection, set on an Irish island, tells of a pilgrim on an inner journey that leads him back into the world that formed him, and then forward to face the crises of the present. Writing in The Washington Post Book World, Hugh Kenner called the narrative sequence in Seamus Heaney''s Station Island "as fine a long poem as we''ve had in fifty years."

Examines the works of a range of poets to discuss poetry''s ability to redress spiritual balance as a counterweight to oppressive forces.

''Seamus Heaney has gone beyond the themes of his earlier poetry and has made the giant step towards the most ambitious, most intractable themes of maturity. The power of this book comes from a sense that he is reaching out towards a type of desolation and of isolation without which no imagination can be seen to have grown up.'' Eavan Boland, Irish Times ''Keyed and pitched unlike any other significant poet at work in the language anywhere.'' Harold Bloom, Times Literary Supplement

Poems, 1965-1975 gathers nearly all of the poems from Seamus Heaney''s first four collections: Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door into the Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), and North (1975).

Field Work is the record of four years during which Seamus Heaney left the violence of Belfast to settle in a country cottage with his family in Glanmore, County Wicklow. Heeding "an early warning system to get back inside my own head," Heaney wrote poems with a new strength and maturity, moving from the political concerns of his landmark volume North to a more personal, contemplative approach to the world and to his own writing. In Field Work he "brings a meditative music to bear upon fundamental themes of person and place, the mutuality of ourselves and the world" (Denis Donoghue, The New York Times Book Review).

Door into the Dark, Seamus Heaney''s second collection of poems, first appeared in 1969. Already his widely celebrated gifts of precision, thoughtfulness, and musicality were everywhere apparent.

In this Kenneth Allott Lecture, Seamus Heaney explores the relationship between ''the almost physiological operations of a poet composing and the music of the finished poem'' through illustrative readings of Wordsworth and Yeats.

Seeing Things (1991), as Edward Hirsch wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "is a book of thresholds and crossings, of losses balanced by marvels, of casting and gathering and the hushed, contrary air between water and sky, earth and heaven." Along with translations from the Aeneid and the Inferno, this book offers several poems about Seamus Heaney''s late father.

The complete translations of the poet Seamus Heaney, a Nobel laureate and prolific, revolutionary translator. Seamus Heaney''s translation of Beowulf, published in 1999, was immediately hailed as an undisputed masterpiece, "something imperishable and great" (James Wood, The Guardian). A few years after his death in 2013, his translation of Virgil''s Aeneid Book VI caused a similar stir, providing "a remarkable and fitting epilogue to one of the great poetic careers of recent times" (Nick Laird, Harper''s Magazine). Now, for the first time, the poet, critic, and essayist''s translations are gathered in one volume. Heaney translated not only classic works of Latin and Old English but also a great number of poems from Spanish, Romanian, Dutch, Russian, German, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, Ancient and Modern Greek, Middle and Modern French, and Medieval and Modern Italian, among other languages. In particular, the Nobel laureate engaged with works in Old, Middle, and Modern Irish, the languages of his homeland and early education. As he said, "If you lived in the Irish countryside as I did in my childhood, you lived in a primal Gaeltacht." In The Translations of Seamus Heaney, Marco Sonzogni has collected Heaney''s translations and framed them with the poet''s own writings on his works and their composition, sourced from introductions, interviews, and commentaries. Through this volume, we come closer to grasping the true extent of Heaney''s extraordinary abilities and his genius.

A collection of poems by Irish poet Seamus Heaney.