Poems, 1965-1975
5/5
()
About this ebook
Seamus Heaney
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."
Read more from Seamus Heaney
The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles' Antigone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems 1988-2013 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Human Chain: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5North: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems 1966-1987 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Station Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Redress of Poetry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Death of a Naturalist: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Haw Lantern: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Government of the Tongue: Selected Prose, 1978-1987 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Door into the Dark: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5President Mary McAleese: Building Bridges - Selected Speeches and Statements Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDistrict and Circle: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Francis Ledwidge: Selected Poems Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Poems, 1965-1975
Related ebooks
Death of a Naturalist: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems 1988-2013 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems 1966-1987 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Door into the Dark: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5North: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Station Island Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Haw Lantern: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Human Chain: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Village Life: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Donne Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5First Fig and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Works of Rainer Maria Rilke: The Complete Works PergamonMedia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTulips & Chimneys Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5New Hampshire: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Best American Poetry 2016 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poet and His Book: The Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Waste Land Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems, 1968-1996 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Poetry of William Butler Yeats Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vita Nova Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Works of T.S. Eliot Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Winter Recipes from the Collective: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Heart Is Strange: New Selected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew Selected Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Poetry For You
The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Poems, 1965-1975
3 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Simply genius.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What can you say about Seamus Heaney that hasn't already been said? One should be able to understand why he has won the awards he has. Is he Ireland's greatest poet? Perhaps simply one of the greatest poets ever? Hell, I feel lucky just to have been published alongside him in some of the same journals, especially Irish ones. For god's sake, if you don't know his work, look it up. This book is a great place to start and definitely recommended!
Book preview
Poems, 1965-1975 - Seamus Heaney
BOOKS BY SEAMUS HEANEY
POETRY
Death of a Naturalist
Door into the Dark
Wintering Out
North
Field Work
Poems 1965–1975
Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish
Station Island
The Haw Lantern
Selected Poems 1966–1987
Seeing Things
Sweeney’s Flight (with photographs by Rachel Giese)
The Spirit Level
CRITICISM
Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–78
The Government of the Tongue
The Redress of Poetry
PLAYS
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes
TRANSLATIONS
Laments: Poems of Jan Kochanowski (with Stanislaw Baranczak)
Seamus Heaney
POEMS
1965–1975
Death of a Naturalist
Door into the Dark
Wintering Out
North
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street. New York 10011
Copyright © 1966. 1969. 1975. 1975. 1980 by Seamus Heaney
All right reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published in 1980 by Farrar. Straus and Giroux
First paperback edition. 1980
Seven poems
that appeared in the original edition
of Death of a Naturalist
are not included in this volume.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 80068753
Paperback ISBN-13:978-0-375-5162-9
Paperback ISBN-10:0-374-51652-9
www.fsgbooks.com
31 33 34 32 30
CONTENTS
Death of a Naturalist
Digging
Death of a Naturalist
The Barn
An Advancement of Learning
Blackberry-Picking
Churning Day
The Early Purges
Follower
Ancestral Photograph
Mid-Term Break
Dawn Shoot
At a Potato Digging
For the Commander of the ‘Eliza’
The Diviner
Turkeys Observed
Cow in Calf
Trout
Docker
Gravities
Twice Shy
Valediction
Lovers on Aran
Poem
Honeymoon Flight
Scaffolding
In Small Townlands
Personal Helicon
Door into the Dark
Night-Piece
Gone
Dream
The Outlaw
The Salmon Fisher to the Salmon
The Forge
Thatcher
The Peninsula
In Gallarus Oratory
Girls Bathing, Galway
Requiem for the Croppies
Rite of Spring
Undine
The Wife’s Tale
Mother
Cana Revisited
Elegy for a Still-born Child
Victorian Guitar
Night Drive
At Ardboe Point
Relic of Memory
A Lough Neagh Sequence
1. Up the Shore
2. Beyond Sargasso
3. Bait
4. Setting
5. Lifting
6. The Return
7. Vision
The Given Note
Whinlands
The Plantation
Shoreline
Bann Clay
Bogland
Wintering Out
PART ONE
Fodder
Bog Oak
Anahorish
Servant Boy
The Last Mummer
Land
Gifts of Rain
Toome
Broagh
Oracle
The Backward Look
Traditions
A New Song
The Other Side
The Wool Trade
Linen Town
A Northern Hoard
1. Roots
2. No Man’s Land
3. Stump
4. No Sanctuary
5. Tinder
Midnight
The Tollund Man
Nerthus
Cairn-maker
Navvy
Veteran’s Dream
Augury
PART TWO
Wedding Day
Mother of the Groom
Summer Home
Serenades
Somnambulist
A Winter’s Tale
Shore Woman
Maighdean Mara
Limbo
Bye-Child
Good-night
First Calf
May
Fireside
Dawn
Travel
Westering
North
Mossbawn: Two Poems in Dedication for Mary Heaney
1 Sunlight
2 The Seed Cutters
PART ONE
Antaeus
Belderg
Funeral Rites
North
Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces
The Digging Skeleton
Bone Dreams
Come to the Bower
Bog Queen
The Grauballe Man
Punishment
Strange Fruit
Kinship
Ocean’s Love to Ireland
Aisling
Act of Union
The Betrothal of Cavehill
Hercules and Antaeus
PART TWO
The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream
Whatever You Say Say Nothing
Freedman
Singing School
1 The Ministry of Fear
2 A Constable Calls
3 Orange Drums, Tyrone, 1966
4 Summer 1969
5 Fosterage
6 Exposure
DEATH OF A NATURALIST
FOR MARIE
DIGGING
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
DEATH OF A NATURALIST
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were