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Selected Poems, 1966-1987
"Between my fingers and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it." Selected Poems 1966-1987 assembles the groundbreaking work of the first half of Seamus Heaney's extraordinary career. This edition, arranged by the author himself, includes the seminal early poetry that struck readers with the force of revelation and heralded the arrival of an heir to Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, and Robert Frost.
Helen Vendler called Heaney "a poet of the in-between," and the work collected here dwells in the borderlands dividing the ancient and the contemporary, the mythic and the quotidian. Gathering poetry from his first seven collections, Selected Poems 1966-1987 presents the young man from County Derry, Northern Ireland, who "emerged from a hidden, a buried life" in Death of a Naturalist (1966), with his cherished poems "Digging" and "Mid-term Break"; the poet of conscience "as bleak as he is bright" in "Whatever You Say Say Nothing" and "Singing School"; and the astonishingly gifted, mature craftsman behind Field Work (1979) and Station Island (1984)-an artist uncannily attuned to the "music of what happens," restlessly searching "for images and symbols adequate to our predicament."
This volume, together with its companion Selected Poems 1988-2013 , allows us to revisit the essential work of one of the great writers of our age through his own compilation.
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it." Selected Poems 1966-1987 assembles the groundbreaking work of the first half of Seamus Heaney's extraordinary career. This edition, arranged by the author himself, includes the seminal early poetry that struck readers with the force of revelation and heralded the arrival of an heir to Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats, and Robert Frost.
Helen Vendler called Heaney "a poet of the in-between," and the work collected here dwells in the borderlands dividing the ancient and the contemporary, the mythic and the quotidian. Gathering poetry from his first seven collections, Selected Poems 1966-1987 presents the young man from County Derry, Northern Ireland, who "emerged from a hidden, a buried life" in Death of a Naturalist (1966), with his cherished poems "Digging" and "Mid-term Break"; the poet of conscience "as bleak as he is bright" in "Whatever You Say Say Nothing" and "Singing School"; and the astonishingly gifted, mature craftsman behind Field Work (1979) and Station Island (1984)-an artist uncannily attuned to the "music of what happens," restlessly searching "for images and symbols adequate to our predicament."
This volume, together with its companion Selected Poems 1988-2013 , allows us to revisit the essential work of one of the great writers of our age through his own compilation.
273 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
195 people are currently reading
2337 people want to read
About the author
Seamus Heaney
380 books1,084 followersWorks of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections
Wintering Out
(1972) and
Field Work
(1979) as well as a translation of
Beowulf
(1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.
This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
Heaney on Wikipedia.
This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
Heaney on Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 146 reviews
March 22, 2017
Heaney’s poetry is more a voice than a style.
It seems to have been written to be listened to rather than to be thoroughly dissected and scrutinized.
The evocative tinge of children’s ideals and the brutality of a land divided by history and religion pulsate underneath the serene, almost romantic pace of his verses.
In Heaney’s hands, poetry appears to be the only means of communication, the only possible language to capture past, present and vision. His words emanate in effortless streams of a semi-conscious state where remembered dreams and unadorned reality, in their all-encompassing rural splendor, keep an ongoing conversation that sounds too alien for the irrational violence that kills and persecutes whatever beauty the poet seeks to immortalize in timeless writing.
What is the use of poetry then, in a world where tragedy, pain and relentless conflict tears people apart?
The image of the poet seeking his own voice to describe the wonders of nature and calamity, tradition and war, myth and dogma, to exorcize his demons in order to reinvent his new meaning, should be enough of a response.
Poetry defines the self.
Poetry can be a conduit to understand life; its force is as powerful as that of love, loss or death.
Poetry binds us together in an invisible net, greater than ourselves, islands cease to be isolated, the infinite is graspable, and landscapes become un-coded by water and ground founded clean on their own shapes, in all their extremity.”
I followed the directions of Heaney’s road map and arrived at a place where there is nothing else to say; the roaring of waves and the abrupt cliffs will always welcome me back home.
It seems to have been written to be listened to rather than to be thoroughly dissected and scrutinized.
The evocative tinge of children’s ideals and the brutality of a land divided by history and religion pulsate underneath the serene, almost romantic pace of his verses.
In Heaney’s hands, poetry appears to be the only means of communication, the only possible language to capture past, present and vision. His words emanate in effortless streams of a semi-conscious state where remembered dreams and unadorned reality, in their all-encompassing rural splendor, keep an ongoing conversation that sounds too alien for the irrational violence that kills and persecutes whatever beauty the poet seeks to immortalize in timeless writing.
What is the use of poetry then, in a world where tragedy, pain and relentless conflict tears people apart?
The image of the poet seeking his own voice to describe the wonders of nature and calamity, tradition and war, myth and dogma, to exorcize his demons in order to reinvent his new meaning, should be enough of a response.
Poetry defines the self.
Poetry can be a conduit to understand life; its force is as powerful as that of love, loss or death.
Poetry binds us together in an invisible net, greater than ourselves, islands cease to be isolated, the infinite is graspable, and landscapes become un-coded by water and ground founded clean on their own shapes, in all their extremity.”
I followed the directions of Heaney’s road map and arrived at a place where there is nothing else to say; the roaring of waves and the abrupt cliffs will always welcome me back home.
December 23, 2018
NOTE: I'm really close to a milestone on my Instagram (3,000 followers!) and would love to reach it: www.instagram.com/alicetiedthebookish...
I came across Seamus Heaney's poetry last year during my pre-University course and found myself immensely enjoying his writing style. His visions are historical, natural and insightful and this collection was full of poems I enjoyed. Some short, some long but the vast majority really got to the point. This collection is a great place to start if you are studying Heaney or looking to try some poetry reading for the first time!
I came across Seamus Heaney's poetry last year during my pre-University course and found myself immensely enjoying his writing style. His visions are historical, natural and insightful and this collection was full of poems I enjoyed. Some short, some long but the vast majority really got to the point. This collection is a great place to start if you are studying Heaney or looking to try some poetry reading for the first time!
June 28, 2025
Been wanting to complete reading this selection of poems by Seamus Heaney for many years. A remarkable poet and man. Recent tv documentary also spurred me.
This selection includes his most famous ‘Digging’ as well as the death of a younger brother in ‘Mid-Term Break:
‘Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.’
His poems cover the death of a cousin during ‘The Troubles’ and of the sadness around his mothers death, as well as ‘The Troubles.’
Rich imagery. Smells of peat. Stags, Badgers - animals abound. Peat not only to be cut and burned but as the resting places of people in death.
The ‘Bog Queen:’
‘ I lay waiting
On the gravel bottom,
My brain darkening
a jar of spawn
fermenting underground…’
I have just noticed a CD collection by the poet recounting his poems. I think I need to buy😉
Recommend this book and poet. He deserved the Nobel prize.
This selection includes his most famous ‘Digging’ as well as the death of a younger brother in ‘Mid-Term Break:
‘Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.’
His poems cover the death of a cousin during ‘The Troubles’ and of the sadness around his mothers death, as well as ‘The Troubles.’
Rich imagery. Smells of peat. Stags, Badgers - animals abound. Peat not only to be cut and burned but as the resting places of people in death.
The ‘Bog Queen:’
‘ I lay waiting
On the gravel bottom,
My brain darkening
a jar of spawn
fermenting underground…’
I have just noticed a CD collection by the poet recounting his poems. I think I need to buy😉
Recommend this book and poet. He deserved the Nobel prize.
October 5, 2016
موسيقى الشعر..موسيقى الحزن والفقد..همهمة الهجر والشعور بأن الروح التي تجمع وتوحد قد غادرت كل البلد وكل الشعب..قصائد مرهفة بلا أي مزايدات من هذا الشاعر الأيرلندي الحاصل على جائزة نوبل للآداب في ١٩٩٥...
قصائد هايكو ولكن من أيرلندا وليس اليابان
قصائد هايكو ولكن من أيرلندا وليس اليابان
June 26, 2025
New Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney is like holding a spade made of starlight and digging gently through the layered soil of language, memory, and place. Spanning poems from Death of a Naturalist (1966) through The Spirit Level (1996), this collection is the perfect distilled draught of Heaney’s lyrical mastery—earthy yet transcendent, plainspoken yet profound.
Heaney writes as both archaeologist and alchemist. Whether he’s unearthing Iron Age bog bodies, remembering his father’s stoic hands, or listening to the rain fall over peatland, he draws the sacred from the everyday. His themes—childhood, Irish identity, history, violence, and the rural landscape—are rendered with such sensory clarity, it’s as though language itself is mossy, damp, and humming with life. Heaney doesn’t just describe—he inhabits.
This collection includes some of his most beloved works: “Digging,” “Blackberry-Picking,” “The Tollund Man,” “Punishment,” “The Strand at Lough Beg,” “Postscript”—each one a masterclass in poetic form, empathy, and restraint.
I first read this in 2014, on a slow, rainy afternoon. One poem in, and I felt I was no longer reading—but being gently excavated. Heaney made me fall back in love with language that listens. His poetry doesn’t shout. It murmurs in your bones. And by the end of it, I wanted to dig, to write, to remember. Heaney isn’t just a poet. He’s a place you return to.
Heaney writes as both archaeologist and alchemist. Whether he’s unearthing Iron Age bog bodies, remembering his father’s stoic hands, or listening to the rain fall over peatland, he draws the sacred from the everyday. His themes—childhood, Irish identity, history, violence, and the rural landscape—are rendered with such sensory clarity, it’s as though language itself is mossy, damp, and humming with life. Heaney doesn’t just describe—he inhabits.
This collection includes some of his most beloved works: “Digging,” “Blackberry-Picking,” “The Tollund Man,” “Punishment,” “The Strand at Lough Beg,” “Postscript”—each one a masterclass in poetic form, empathy, and restraint.
I first read this in 2014, on a slow, rainy afternoon. One poem in, and I felt I was no longer reading—but being gently excavated. Heaney made me fall back in love with language that listens. His poetry doesn’t shout. It murmurs in your bones. And by the end of it, I wanted to dig, to write, to remember. Heaney isn’t just a poet. He’s a place you return to.
August 10, 2025
I found a cheap paperback of this at Leakey's Bookshop in Inverness and had to have this book by my favorite poet. This book is a great collection of Seamus Heaney's poetry from different periods of his literary career. Some of the poems explore Heaney's youth in County Derry, Irish mythology, the Irish language and landscape, farm life, doubt, pain, questions, love, hope, family, and the gift of being alive in the present. I highly recommend this book.
May 9, 2020
From the nature of this being a collection (the clue is, after all, right there in the title) one knows that it is the literary equivalent of a greatest hits album but I was still a little disappointed to find that some of the poems reprinted here are in a cut down form. Surely Heaney has enough shorter work to fill a book like this without having to include slightly bastardised versions of his longer works?
This minor grumble aside, anyone who knows Heaney’s work will know that it is really rather wonderful. At times political, spiritual, showing a great love of the natural world and deeply personal, this is a great cross-section of the first half of the great poet’s career.
You can actually see a real progression as this book moves forward in time. While it’s true all his work is a testament to lyrical precision, with every word carefully considered and perfectly chosen, there is a slight tendency towards obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation in his earlier works that disappears entirely as he matures as a writer.
This minor grumble aside, anyone who knows Heaney’s work will know that it is really rather wonderful. At times political, spiritual, showing a great love of the natural world and deeply personal, this is a great cross-section of the first half of the great poet’s career.
You can actually see a real progression as this book moves forward in time. While it’s true all his work is a testament to lyrical precision, with every word carefully considered and perfectly chosen, there is a slight tendency towards obfuscation for the sake of obfuscation in his earlier works that disappears entirely as he matures as a writer.
September 29, 2022
No one captures the heft and feel of things like Heaney: his poetic scales are so finely calibrated you could weigh air and light in them.
Don Paterson
Don Paterson
April 1, 2020
Let it be known that during at least part of the pandemic, I spent a day in Cambridge, idly watching Hairspray, and swallowing Seamus Heaney poems, ticking all the romantic ones.
The Otter
When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.
I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.
I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.
Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.
My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,
Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Re-tilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.
And suddenly you’re out,
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones.
The Otter
When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.
I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Your fine swimmer’s back and shoulders
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.
I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.
Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.
My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,
Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Re-tilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.
And suddenly you’re out,
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones.
January 8, 2023
great to appreciate this poet as an adult, and to read more than the smaller collection from the early part of this time period I read as a teenager at school 🙂
I think I've always enjoyed alot of his imagery.
I especially enjoyed some of the observations of nature, and how much of the natural world poems about the human world included (eg Alphabets).
it was good to have a greater understanding and perspective on his more autobiographical and political poems 🙂
I think I've always enjoyed alot of his imagery.
I especially enjoyed some of the observations of nature, and how much of the natural world poems about the human world included (eg Alphabets).
it was good to have a greater understanding and perspective on his more autobiographical and political poems 🙂
June 20, 2021
Heaney proves to be a poet of brilliant capabilities with moments of blunt yet beautiful poetics, managing to blend the social-political aspects of late Yeats with an intimate, confessional style.
Though he can be very, very clumsy, and his inconsistency is frustrating — the selections from between Door Into The Dark and North, and most between Field Work and The Haw Lantern felt incredibly lazy or else so bogged down in vaguely executed conceit that it felt like a wade of muck (and not the good kind of Heaney bog muck).
It appears for much time Heaney tried to continue riding out his themes of the bog and his own rural up bringing and it just does not achieve anything more brilliant than the immediacy and vibrancy of his first collection, and ends up being incredibly annoying... but it should be said that these are Selections, so the individual volumes themselves may prove more diverse.
His ways of exploring Northern Ireland's Troubles over so many poems come nowhere close to what Yeats managed to do for the island as a whole across very few in Michael Robartes..., though he is nevertheless critical in the Irish poetry canon for doing so with such success and connectivity in the culture. His explorations of the sectarian divide can be clumsy, but he reaches his best in this area in the simplistic narrative poems of his early and mid career
The Haw Lantern selections (the final included collection) became much tighter and of good quality, so I hope that his works after this continue thusly.
This selection has not distracted me from my goal to read Heaney's complete works across the coming years, but it has revealed fully that while Heaney can be a writer of genius, he is not consistent — and in his lowest moments can be frustratingly dull.
Though he can be very, very clumsy, and his inconsistency is frustrating — the selections from between Door Into The Dark and North, and most between Field Work and The Haw Lantern felt incredibly lazy or else so bogged down in vaguely executed conceit that it felt like a wade of muck (and not the good kind of Heaney bog muck).
It appears for much time Heaney tried to continue riding out his themes of the bog and his own rural up bringing and it just does not achieve anything more brilliant than the immediacy and vibrancy of his first collection, and ends up being incredibly annoying... but it should be said that these are Selections, so the individual volumes themselves may prove more diverse.
His ways of exploring Northern Ireland's Troubles over so many poems come nowhere close to what Yeats managed to do for the island as a whole across very few in Michael Robartes..., though he is nevertheless critical in the Irish poetry canon for doing so with such success and connectivity in the culture. His explorations of the sectarian divide can be clumsy, but he reaches his best in this area in the simplistic narrative poems of his early and mid career
The Haw Lantern selections (the final included collection) became much tighter and of good quality, so I hope that his works after this continue thusly.
This selection has not distracted me from my goal to read Heaney's complete works across the coming years, but it has revealed fully that while Heaney can be a writer of genius, he is not consistent — and in his lowest moments can be frustratingly dull.
July 30, 2008
Mid-term Break
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
Dear Mr. Heaney:
This poem brings me to my knees every time. The first time I read it was junior year of high school. There was a communal gasp as the last line left the reader's lips. I don't think any of us fully recovered.
Thank you for that.
Sincerely,
Michael
P.S. "Digging" and "Bogland" are equal in beauty but much deeper.
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
Dear Mr. Heaney:
This poem brings me to my knees every time. The first time I read it was junior year of high school. There was a communal gasp as the last line left the reader's lips. I don't think any of us fully recovered.
Thank you for that.
Sincerely,
Michael
P.S. "Digging" and "Bogland" are equal in beauty but much deeper.
November 14, 2017
At the comprehensive school I attended, for a young boy to admit to an enjoyment of poetry served only to guarantee him a one-way ticket to the bramble patch at the school gates. Despite this, I have loved poetry since my early teens, and Seamus Heaney has always been one of my favourites.
Apart from Ted Hughes, I can't think of any poet who writes about nature with such passion. His use of metaphor and simile is incredible, and the musicality of the language transports the reader straight to the peaty, boggy, rocky world of rural Ireland - ironically, such is Heaney's talent with describing nature, he could probably have written a beautiful poem about a teenage boy floundering in brambles trying to retrieve his school bag from a stream while his persecutors laughed and threw stones at him.
Highly recommended.
Apart from Ted Hughes, I can't think of any poet who writes about nature with such passion. His use of metaphor and simile is incredible, and the musicality of the language transports the reader straight to the peaty, boggy, rocky world of rural Ireland - ironically, such is Heaney's talent with describing nature, he could probably have written a beautiful poem about a teenage boy floundering in brambles trying to retrieve his school bag from a stream while his persecutors laughed and threw stones at him.
Highly recommended.
September 2, 2013
Clearances
In memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984
By Seamus Heaney
She taught me what her uncle once taught her:
How easily the biggest coal block split
If you got the grain and hammer angled right.
The sound of that relaxed alluring blow,
Its co-opted and obliterated echo,
Taught me to hit, taught me to loosen,
Taught me between the hammer and the block
To face the music. Teach me now to listen,
To strike it rich behind the linear black.
October 8, 2016
When I read a Seamus Heaney poem I run, sprint, to my desk and write.
November 21, 2025
Largely a very good collection, but it's clear that certain eras of his work are better than others. I at least prefer his older stuff, maybe because his work became less accesible and more suspended. I understand a taste for poems that are unresolved or momentary explorations, but I often think they're too crytic and take themselves too seriously for their own good.
I particulary enjoyed then Glanmore Sonnets. I often find sonnets are hard to pull off and keep the reader captivated but these were everything a sonnet should be, and explore themes and imagery that really appeal to me. Highly recommend dipping into this work of his <3
I particulary enjoyed then Glanmore Sonnets. I often find sonnets are hard to pull off and keep the reader captivated but these were everything a sonnet should be, and explore themes and imagery that really appeal to me. Highly recommend dipping into this work of his <3
June 3, 2024
Seamus Heaney would write the best poetry I have ever read, only to follow it with a contender. The first poem would be about dirt in the Newry Canal, and the next about his cousin's dead ex-boyfriend's ghost, detailing his personal account of the Troubles and its socioeconomic impact on his family.
His grasp of the English language is unmatched, and his ability to detail and enhance the mundane and obvious is awe inspiring and continuously groundbreaking. Every word lingers on like a tick from Richmond...
His grasp of the English language is unmatched, and his ability to detail and enhance the mundane and obvious is awe inspiring and continuously groundbreaking. Every word lingers on like a tick from Richmond...
December 18, 2024
«Du måtte koma tilbake
for å læra å mista deg sjølv»
Fra «Tonen som kom» Dikt i utval ved Alf Saltveit (1989).
for å læra å mista deg sjølv»
Fra «Tonen som kom» Dikt i utval ved Alf Saltveit (1989).
December 8, 2017
Night Drive
by Seamus Heaney
The smells of ordinariness
Were new on the night drive through France;
Rain and hay and woods on the air
Made warm draughts in the open car.
Signposts whitened relentlessly.
Montrueil, Abbéville, Beauvais
Were promised, promised, came and went,
Each place granting its name’s fulfilment.
A combine groaning its way late
Bled seeds across its work-light.
A forest fire smouldered out.
One by one small cafés shut.
I thought of you continuously
A thousand miles south where Italy
Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.
Your ordinariness was renewed there.
by Seamus Heaney
The smells of ordinariness
Were new on the night drive through France;
Rain and hay and woods on the air
Made warm draughts in the open car.
Signposts whitened relentlessly.
Montrueil, Abbéville, Beauvais
Were promised, promised, came and went,
Each place granting its name’s fulfilment.
A combine groaning its way late
Bled seeds across its work-light.
A forest fire smouldered out.
One by one small cafés shut.
I thought of you continuously
A thousand miles south where Italy
Laid its loin to France on the darkened sphere.
Your ordinariness was renewed there.
October 6, 2015
For a very select audience, this documentation of 21 years of Seamus Heaney's poetry career will be an enjoyable and cathartic journey through Ireland and its culture.
As a retrospective of what is now the first half of Seamus Heaney’s poetry career, New Selected Poems: 1966-1987 (Faber and Faber, ISBN: 0-571-14372-5, 1990) does well in showing a man who rallied for not just justice and understanding for the working class, but the imagination and beauty within it.
Stretching from 1966-1987, this volume collects work from Heaney’s first seven collections of verse: Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door into the Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), North (1975), Field Work (1979), Station Island (1984), and The Haw Lantern (1987). Also included are prose poems from Stations (1975) as well as excerpts from Sweeney Astray (1983), Heaney’s English translation of the legend of Irish king Buile Shuibhne.
A Strong Sense of Place
Heaney’s work has a strong sense of place. Any reader familiar with “salt-of-the-earth” types may expect Heaney’s dense stories of blue-collar Irish life to be easier to swallow. However, be warned that the weight of the work almost seems too condensed, as if there was a narrative thread running through each poem at one point, only to be removed later in favor of a more stated, “poetic” tone.
Muddled Clarity
The early poems “Mid-Term Break” and “The Other Side” stand out because of their personal importance and focus on a sort of clever sadness. Heaney tries to imbed the woes and concerns of all of Ireland within every poem, and while a later poem such as “Hailstones” achieves a connection for the character and the country, there are more instances of the clarity being muddled from an attempt to pack a poem too full.
The prose poems do not fare much better, as any sense of narrative is absent. The longer work – poems from Station Island, specifically – show more of a tie from poem to poem, but even then poems like “Chekhov on Sakhalin” and “Making Strange” suffer from their own overuse of the poetic statement.
A Vocalized Strength
These poems benefit greatly from being read out loud. A reader may find more power in the poems if she reads them audibly to herself (perhaps even with an Irish accent, like Heaney). To hear the poems brings out their best qualities: the smart line-breaks, the way Heaney unlocks the natural cadence in a piece of poetry, the emotion and timing of the language and the characters/narrators who use it.
More often than not, these traits ended up working near the actual meat of the poem as opposed to with it. When Heaney can grasp both his craft and his point in his hands simultaneously, as he does in “Strange Fruit,” the results are quite good. While there are no offensively bad works in this collection, the results rarely transcend an audience of those who are interested in working-class Irish culture and history.
As a retrospective of what is now the first half of Seamus Heaney’s poetry career, New Selected Poems: 1966-1987 (Faber and Faber, ISBN: 0-571-14372-5, 1990) does well in showing a man who rallied for not just justice and understanding for the working class, but the imagination and beauty within it.
Stretching from 1966-1987, this volume collects work from Heaney’s first seven collections of verse: Death of a Naturalist (1966), Door into the Dark (1969), Wintering Out (1972), North (1975), Field Work (1979), Station Island (1984), and The Haw Lantern (1987). Also included are prose poems from Stations (1975) as well as excerpts from Sweeney Astray (1983), Heaney’s English translation of the legend of Irish king Buile Shuibhne.
A Strong Sense of Place
Heaney’s work has a strong sense of place. Any reader familiar with “salt-of-the-earth” types may expect Heaney’s dense stories of blue-collar Irish life to be easier to swallow. However, be warned that the weight of the work almost seems too condensed, as if there was a narrative thread running through each poem at one point, only to be removed later in favor of a more stated, “poetic” tone.
Muddled Clarity
The early poems “Mid-Term Break” and “The Other Side” stand out because of their personal importance and focus on a sort of clever sadness. Heaney tries to imbed the woes and concerns of all of Ireland within every poem, and while a later poem such as “Hailstones” achieves a connection for the character and the country, there are more instances of the clarity being muddled from an attempt to pack a poem too full.
The prose poems do not fare much better, as any sense of narrative is absent. The longer work – poems from Station Island, specifically – show more of a tie from poem to poem, but even then poems like “Chekhov on Sakhalin” and “Making Strange” suffer from their own overuse of the poetic statement.
A Vocalized Strength
These poems benefit greatly from being read out loud. A reader may find more power in the poems if she reads them audibly to herself (perhaps even with an Irish accent, like Heaney). To hear the poems brings out their best qualities: the smart line-breaks, the way Heaney unlocks the natural cadence in a piece of poetry, the emotion and timing of the language and the characters/narrators who use it.
More often than not, these traits ended up working near the actual meat of the poem as opposed to with it. When Heaney can grasp both his craft and his point in his hands simultaneously, as he does in “Strange Fruit,” the results are quite good. While there are no offensively bad works in this collection, the results rarely transcend an audience of those who are interested in working-class Irish culture and history.
April 15, 2015
“When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives –
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.”
“Tonight, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independent shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.”
Sparse, pious, Catholic.
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives –
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.”
“Tonight, a first movement, a pulse,
As if the rain in bogland gathered head
To slip and flood: a bog-burst,
A gash breaking open the ferny bed.
Your back is a firm line of eastern coast
And arms and legs are thrown
Beyond your gradual hills. I caress
The heaving province where our past has grown.
I am the tall kingdom over your shoulder
That you would neither cajole nor ignore.
Conquest is a lie. I grow older
Conceding your half-independent shore
Within whose borders now my legacy
Culminates inexorably.”
Sparse, pious, Catholic.
July 19, 2008
"In the nineteen forties, when I was the eldest child of an ever-growing family in rural Co. Derry, we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world. It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingled with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other. We took in everything that was going on, of course - rain in the trees, mice on the ceiling, a steam train rumbling along the railway line one field back from the house - but we took it in as if we were in the doze of hibernation. Ahistorical, pre-sexual, in suspension between the archaic and the modern, we were as susceptible and impressionable as the drinking water that stood in a bucket in our scullery: every time a passing train made the earth shake, the surface of that water used to ripple delicately, concentrically, and in utter silence."
July 13, 2016
I didn't study much poetry in my English Lit classes, so I've been reading through some of the classics, both old and contemporary, over the years. I've been dipping in and out of this volume of Seamus Heaney's poems for a while now and I've finally, finally finished it!
Some of his work appealed to me, whereas others just felt very repetitive. I liked his strong recurrent themes such as his praise of the working class and his comments on social injustice, but I did feel like I didn't understand some it because I'm not Irish and haven't read up on a lot of Irish history. Still, two firm favourites that I picked out of this volume were 'Mid-Term Break' and 'The Other Side' which really stuck in my head long after I'd closed the book.
Some of his work appealed to me, whereas others just felt very repetitive. I liked his strong recurrent themes such as his praise of the working class and his comments on social injustice, but I did feel like I didn't understand some it because I'm not Irish and haven't read up on a lot of Irish history. Still, two firm favourites that I picked out of this volume were 'Mid-Term Break' and 'The Other Side' which really stuck in my head long after I'd closed the book.
July 27, 2015
I haven't read everything in here but I've read quite a lot. They're not bad, they're just not for me. I'm not a huge fan of poetry anyway and Heaney's poems are just all too similar, almost feels like I'm reading the same thing dozens of times.
July 8, 2020
Excellent book on earlier poetry. I did not read North, Station Island or The Haw Lantern, which are in separate books.
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December 22, 2023Seamus Heaney’s early work gorgeously achieved a sort of warped, mucky bucolicism held by textures of rough soil, squishy mulch and damp moss, breathing honest, intimate life into its agrarian canvases. But this also served to bind him, in international eyes, to a limiting stereotype of typical rural Irishness. While there was never a jagged break with these elements, his evolution was one of gradual expansion, with emergent facets of greater intangibility and abstraction, and, at points, a cross into the domain of direct socio-political commentary, fitting for an author born in Northern Ireland to do during the times of The Troubles. Most significantly, and as can be easily traced in this collection, his eyes gradually moved from this early emphasis on the darkened earthy mineral ground, up and above to airy realms of light and sky, touched by the beautiful and the ethereal ("clarity" being the word most worthy of emphasis for Rui Carvalho Homem in the Portuguese translation). What we lose in the patchwork form of projects like this collection, which deny us the chance to be absorbed in a single tight, well-crafted mood, we gain in the ability to fast-track the evolution of an artist, and, in this case, truly get a sense of the ground-air and darkened-clear dualities that may define Heaney’s career as a whole.
August 23, 2022
There are some gems in here, and some that maybe I can understand without a professor explaining to me, which I think is the best feeling in the world - when I can't make heads or tails out of something I just read, and then a teacher or tutor explains it to me in a way I can understand and then I'm ready to answer, ah, yes, that feeling makes it all worthy. Who reads poetry anyway? Well, poetry is really popular and I understand why, it is everywhere from the scripture to the advertisements we see, and even the lines from the movies we watch. There are a lot going on in this massive collection, that took me as long to read as a collection as it would take to read an entire novel. I did find a lot of the poems boring though, some not all. Some of them are gems . The ones I found boring were probably small, dumb brain not understanding the nuances and entertainment value of academic writing. A lot of the times my eyes would glaze over a poem with an interesting title, that I didn't find that interesting or really understand, but the ones we did in class that were explained to me so that I could be excited to entertain an answer to were good- these are poems like "Digging", "Midterm Break" or "Bogland". These poems are a bit like scripture, they are healing and can provide comfort no matter what kind of mind state one is in.
February 26, 2022
Not all of these, by any means spoke to me, however quite a few are abut real life including The Troubles & I was intrigued come across poems about Tollmund Man, and other bog bodies. And the line: A rustle of loss in the phrase Not in our lifetime (Canon of Expectation) really hit home when I read it Feb ‘22 re-the Ukraine. I suspect that these would repay careful study.
December 22, 2022
Not finished yet but I'm not exactly reading it either - I read a poem here and there, try to absorb it, reread it, then put the book down for weeks on end. It's enjoyable but slow, and it makes no sense for it to sit on my "Reading" shelf for years. I will absolutely finish it one day. So far, I *loved* the "Death of a Naturalist" poems - they reverberate with intense knowledge of life, nature, legacy and the earth. Stupendously gorgeous poetry.
August 13, 2025
Similar in shape & experience to John Tranter's Selected, in that the early poems are so strange & striking, but by midway through the collection the poet seems to be spinning his wheels, as certain that those early poems can no longer be written as he is uncertain about where to go next, or how to regather that same energy via different means.
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