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Electric Light: Poems
A powerful new collection by the bestselling translator of Beowulf .
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.
--from "Perch"
Seamus Heaney's new collection travels widely in time and space, visiting the sites of the classical world and revisiting the poet's rural electrification and the light of ancient evenings are reconciled within the orbit of a single lifetime. This is a book about origins (not least, the origins of words) and the places where things start from, the ground of understanding -- whether in Arcadia or Anahorish, the sanctuary at Epidaurus or the Bann valley in County Derry.
Electric Light ranges from short takes to conversation poems. The pre-Socratic wisdom that everything flows is held in tension with the elegizing of friends and fellow poets. These gifts of recollection renew the poet's calling to assign things their proper names; once again Heaney can be heard extending his word hoard and roll call in this, his eleventh collection.
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.
--from "Perch"
Seamus Heaney's new collection travels widely in time and space, visiting the sites of the classical world and revisiting the poet's rural electrification and the light of ancient evenings are reconciled within the orbit of a single lifetime. This is a book about origins (not least, the origins of words) and the places where things start from, the ground of understanding -- whether in Arcadia or Anahorish, the sanctuary at Epidaurus or the Bann valley in County Derry.
Electric Light ranges from short takes to conversation poems. The pre-Socratic wisdom that everything flows is held in tension with the elegizing of friends and fellow poets. These gifts of recollection renew the poet's calling to assign things their proper names; once again Heaney can be heard extending his word hoard and roll call in this, his eleventh collection.
98 pages, Hardcover
Published April 8, 2001
21 people are currently reading
403 people want to read
About the author
Seamus Heaney
382 books1,094 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 62 reviews
February 27, 2019
Late in the Day . . .
Red, White, and Blue
1. Red
What I loved about that much-snapped scarlet coat
Was the hunting-jacket look of the fitted waist
And tailored shoulder, the nifty, tricksy bounce
Of hemline hitting off your knee behind
And your knee in front.
‘She’s like a wee pony!’
Butter wouldn’t melt in that smiler’s mouth
So I smiled straight back, as who should say, ‘Good God,
You know you’re absolutely right.
I love the go and gladsomeness in her,
Something unbroken, her gift for pure dismay
At shits like you.’
And had the good fortune
To smile again into his peeky face
Later that night, as you jived with me hell for leather
In the Students Union, the cleared floor like a paddock
Where we gave each other rope and scope and snaffle,
‘Redingote!’ you’d cry.
And me, back, ‘Giddy up!’
2. White
The screaming from the pool was bad enough,
Busloads of school kids coming in on rota
To the baths next door, the banshee acoustic
Of the glass-and-iron dome upping the wildness
But in your state you thought the screaming came
From your labour ward.
At last-kiss, time-to-go time,
You were dry on the lips, hot-cheeked, already gone,
Drifting away on the high berg of the bed.
They had given you a cut-off top of sorts,
Plain as a flour-bag, orphanage-issue stuff,
White calico demure at the neckline
But unmistakably made for access
Elsewhere.
Through its laundered weave
I tried to call you back but your quarantine
Was making you touch-proof and my hand
That thought it knew its way got lost and shied.
Oh where was the thick of thickets, the hug and birl
Of pleasures wrought to anger and beyond?
Ahead of us, my love, the small-hours tournaments,
But that afternoon I left the lists and rode
From the sun-daunting keep of Castle Childbirth
And even though you knew as you lay contracting
Beyond it bastions that lilied moat
Was uncrossable, the drawbridge drawn up,
The battlements secure and audience
With the chatelaine denied, behind your eyes
Eye-tooth-tightened shut against the pangs,
What you still could not help making yourself see
Was the Knight of the White Feather turning tail.
3. Blue
‘Yes, pretty, vey pretty.’ How many times
Have you mimicked the entirely unaffected
And veh genuine touch of class she showed
In her praise of the gate-lodge and the avenue
At Castlebellingham. She was deigning
To bestow that much attention, and in the whim
Of her bestowals we felt ourselves included —
Hitchhikers who must have taken her fancy
Or her husband’s, whom I then took to be
Officer class in civvies on weekend leave
In southern Ireland, as he called it.
‘Tell me,
I mean, you know, in southern Ireland,
Houses like that, are there many of them left?
Your crowd burnt the lot down, did they not,
In the nineteen-twenties?
It then being
1963, we simply dived for cover
(‘We’re from the north’), or might surprise attack
With a quick torrent of names of towns
Burnt in reprisal. But her ‘pretty, veh pretty’,
Said with the half-interest she might display
Later that night, letting her warm silks fall
In the lamplight of some coaching inn in Wicklow,
Was like a reminder a goddess might vouchsafe
To recall a hero to his ardent purpose.
Doves or no doves, it was a Venus car
We had thumbed down after more than half an hour
On the bridge outside Dundalk. You rose before them
In a Fair Isle tank-top and blue denim skirt
And denim jacket. And much blue eye make-up.
A Botticelli dressed down for the sixties.
So their big waxed Rolls flows softly to a halt,
The running board comes level with the footpath
And we are borne — sweet diction — south and south.
**************************************
Red, White, and Blue was to me the most wonderful poem in this collection — a triptych word-painting of early days with his wife, Marie Devlin Heaney. I can’t figure out any connection to the American (or French, or British) flag. Instead, the colors shine from her youthful clothing and seem to represent her vivacious, independent spirit.
**************************************
In the collection as a whole, dedicated to Marie, some poems are marvelous, all are original and well-constructed, but only a few spoke to me — and I had difficulty discerning a theme until the short final section, where nearly every poem is dedicated to the memory of a dead poet or loved one. Then it coalesced: a collection of late-in-life, late-night memories, after the sun has gone down and only electric light remains. That light, a lamp in the dark, shines on the pages of old books of poetry, their authors long gone ahead of him. And in the final poem, entitled Electric Light, the young boy Seamus Heaney encounters electric light for the first time in the home of a hapless and "desperate" old woman who seems perhaps to be his grandmother, but the memory is not warm, but fearful, as he wept in the bedroom, with the light left on against his fear, and the woman was unable to console him.
*************************************
I feel that this collection could grow on me with time, and also that someone more familiar with the poets he “tributes” might get more from this collection than I did on my first round. Here is an excerpt from my favorite of those poignant, nostalgic poems: Clonmany to Ahascragh: in memory of Rory Kavanagh
Be at the door
I opened in the sleepwalk when a green
Hurl of flood overwhelmed me and poured out
Lithe seaweed and a tumult of immense
Green cabbage roses into the downstairs.
No feeling of drowning panicked me, no let-up
In the attic downpour happened, no
Fullness could ever equal it, so flown
And sealed I feared it would be lost
If I put it into words.
But with you there at the door
I can tell it and can weep.
*************************************
Red, White, and Blue
1. Red
What I loved about that much-snapped scarlet coat
Was the hunting-jacket look of the fitted waist
And tailored shoulder, the nifty, tricksy bounce
Of hemline hitting off your knee behind
And your knee in front.
‘She’s like a wee pony!’
Butter wouldn’t melt in that smiler’s mouth
So I smiled straight back, as who should say, ‘Good God,
You know you’re absolutely right.
I love the go and gladsomeness in her,
Something unbroken, her gift for pure dismay
At shits like you.’
And had the good fortune
To smile again into his peeky face
Later that night, as you jived with me hell for leather
In the Students Union, the cleared floor like a paddock
Where we gave each other rope and scope and snaffle,
‘Redingote!’ you’d cry.
And me, back, ‘Giddy up!’
2. White
The screaming from the pool was bad enough,
Busloads of school kids coming in on rota
To the baths next door, the banshee acoustic
Of the glass-and-iron dome upping the wildness
But in your state you thought the screaming came
From your labour ward.
At last-kiss, time-to-go time,
You were dry on the lips, hot-cheeked, already gone,
Drifting away on the high berg of the bed.
They had given you a cut-off top of sorts,
Plain as a flour-bag, orphanage-issue stuff,
White calico demure at the neckline
But unmistakably made for access
Elsewhere.
Through its laundered weave
I tried to call you back but your quarantine
Was making you touch-proof and my hand
That thought it knew its way got lost and shied.
Oh where was the thick of thickets, the hug and birl
Of pleasures wrought to anger and beyond?
Ahead of us, my love, the small-hours tournaments,
But that afternoon I left the lists and rode
From the sun-daunting keep of Castle Childbirth
And even though you knew as you lay contracting
Beyond it bastions that lilied moat
Was uncrossable, the drawbridge drawn up,
The battlements secure and audience
With the chatelaine denied, behind your eyes
Eye-tooth-tightened shut against the pangs,
What you still could not help making yourself see
Was the Knight of the White Feather turning tail.
3. Blue
‘Yes, pretty, vey pretty.’ How many times
Have you mimicked the entirely unaffected
And veh genuine touch of class she showed
In her praise of the gate-lodge and the avenue
At Castlebellingham. She was deigning
To bestow that much attention, and in the whim
Of her bestowals we felt ourselves included —
Hitchhikers who must have taken her fancy
Or her husband’s, whom I then took to be
Officer class in civvies on weekend leave
In southern Ireland, as he called it.
‘Tell me,
I mean, you know, in southern Ireland,
Houses like that, are there many of them left?
Your crowd burnt the lot down, did they not,
In the nineteen-twenties?
It then being
1963, we simply dived for cover
(‘We’re from the north’), or might surprise attack
With a quick torrent of names of towns
Burnt in reprisal. But her ‘pretty, veh pretty’,
Said with the half-interest she might display
Later that night, letting her warm silks fall
In the lamplight of some coaching inn in Wicklow,
Was like a reminder a goddess might vouchsafe
To recall a hero to his ardent purpose.
Doves or no doves, it was a Venus car
We had thumbed down after more than half an hour
On the bridge outside Dundalk. You rose before them
In a Fair Isle tank-top and blue denim skirt
And denim jacket. And much blue eye make-up.
A Botticelli dressed down for the sixties.
So their big waxed Rolls flows softly to a halt,
The running board comes level with the footpath
And we are borne — sweet diction — south and south.
**************************************
Red, White, and Blue was to me the most wonderful poem in this collection — a triptych word-painting of early days with his wife, Marie Devlin Heaney. I can’t figure out any connection to the American (or French, or British) flag. Instead, the colors shine from her youthful clothing and seem to represent her vivacious, independent spirit.
**************************************
In the collection as a whole, dedicated to Marie, some poems are marvelous, all are original and well-constructed, but only a few spoke to me — and I had difficulty discerning a theme until the short final section, where nearly every poem is dedicated to the memory of a dead poet or loved one. Then it coalesced: a collection of late-in-life, late-night memories, after the sun has gone down and only electric light remains. That light, a lamp in the dark, shines on the pages of old books of poetry, their authors long gone ahead of him. And in the final poem, entitled Electric Light, the young boy Seamus Heaney encounters electric light for the first time in the home of a hapless and "desperate" old woman who seems perhaps to be his grandmother, but the memory is not warm, but fearful, as he wept in the bedroom, with the light left on against his fear, and the woman was unable to console him.
*************************************
I feel that this collection could grow on me with time, and also that someone more familiar with the poets he “tributes” might get more from this collection than I did on my first round. Here is an excerpt from my favorite of those poignant, nostalgic poems: Clonmany to Ahascragh: in memory of Rory Kavanagh
Be at the door
I opened in the sleepwalk when a green
Hurl of flood overwhelmed me and poured out
Lithe seaweed and a tumult of immense
Green cabbage roses into the downstairs.
No feeling of drowning panicked me, no let-up
In the attic downpour happened, no
Fullness could ever equal it, so flown
And sealed I feared it would be lost
If I put it into words.
But with you there at the door
I can tell it and can weep.
*************************************
January 2, 2025
Another great volume of poetry by Seamus Heaney. There’s a vein of humour running through this one, which I liked. Masterful work as always.
Turpin Song
The horse pistol, we called it:
Brass inlay smooth in the stock,
Two hammers cocked like lugs,
Two mottled metal barrels,
Sooty nostril led, levelled.
Bracket over the door
Of the lower bedroom, a ghost
Heft that we longed to feel,
Two fingers on two triggers,
The full of your hand of haft.
Where was the Great North Road?
Who rode in a tricorn hat?
Bob Cushley with his jennet?
Ned Kane in his pony and trap?
The thing was out of place.
When I lift up my eyes at the start
Of Stanley Kubrick’s film
A horse pistol comes tumbling
From over the door of the world
And it’s nineteen forty-eight
Or nine, we have transgressed,
We’ve got our hands on it
And it lies there, broken in bits.
Wind blows through the open hay shed.
I lift up my eyes with the apes.
Turpin Song
The horse pistol, we called it:
Brass inlay smooth in the stock,
Two hammers cocked like lugs,
Two mottled metal barrels,
Sooty nostril led, levelled.
Bracket over the door
Of the lower bedroom, a ghost
Heft that we longed to feel,
Two fingers on two triggers,
The full of your hand of haft.
Where was the Great North Road?
Who rode in a tricorn hat?
Bob Cushley with his jennet?
Ned Kane in his pony and trap?
The thing was out of place.
When I lift up my eyes at the start
Of Stanley Kubrick’s film
A horse pistol comes tumbling
From over the door of the world
And it’s nineteen forty-eight
Or nine, we have transgressed,
We’ve got our hands on it
And it lies there, broken in bits.
Wind blows through the open hay shed.
I lift up my eyes with the apes.
March 28, 2023
A lovely volume of poems. My favorite was Out of the Bag with the line “All of is came inDoctor Kerlin’s bag.” A poem about childbirth. Sonnets from Hellas were good to especially Conkers. Loved the lines:
“Tramping on burst shells and crunching down
The high-gloss horse-chestnuts. I thought of kelp
And foals’ hooves, bladderwort, dubbed leather
As I bent to gather them, a hint of ordure”
Audensque a poem in memory of his friend Joseph Brodsky is both poignant and funny. With lines like:
“Politically incorrect
Jokes involving sex and sect,
Everything against the grain,
Drinking, smoking like a train.
In a train in Finland we
Talked last summer happily,
Swapping manuscripts and quips,
Both of us like cracking whips”
This collection of poems is a little gem.
“Tramping on burst shells and crunching down
The high-gloss horse-chestnuts. I thought of kelp
And foals’ hooves, bladderwort, dubbed leather
As I bent to gather them, a hint of ordure”
Audensque a poem in memory of his friend Joseph Brodsky is both poignant and funny. With lines like:
“Politically incorrect
Jokes involving sex and sect,
Everything against the grain,
Drinking, smoking like a train.
In a train in Finland we
Talked last summer happily,
Swapping manuscripts and quips,
Both of us like cracking whips”
This collection of poems is a little gem.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 16, 2012
Heaney is the master craftsman among contemporary poets. Meaning & form always complement each other, in a single organic growth. Moving from word to word, phrase to phrase, you catch different facets and shades, like walking through a wood in sunshine. OK, so I am a Heaney enthusiast, and the most constructive thing I could say about his poems is GO AND READ THEM instead of blathering on like this.
But I’ve got to say a little more, even if it’s only to hint at some of his riches through quotations. “Perch” gives us all of ten lines about a few fish in the River Bann, but what a gem of a poem it is:
“Perch on their water-perch, hung in the clear Bann River
Near the clay bank in the alder dapple and waver."
This is one little example of the clarity and vividness of his descriptions that I love so much. What a superbly done picture in 21 simple words. I love the little word play in the first 5 of them and the echoes of Hopkins in the last 6 words.
Then there’s his trademark and almost inevitable reference back to his childhood, marrying his past with his present. That easy merging into and out of the language of his past:
“Perch we called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs…”
Never content with ‘simple’ description or with nostalgia, he moves into something much bigger, transcendent:
“I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body”
He brings them together beautifully at the end – the ordinary with the extraordinary:
“ … on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.”
I’ve read & re-read & re-read again this simple little poem and I just don’t tire of it. The poem is so short and yet containing so many layers of the reality of his experience and of their essence.
“The Bookcase” can’t but appeal to a biblioholic, and I drool over the description of those wooden shelves.
“Ashwood or oakwood? Planed to silkiness,
Mitred, much eyed-along, each vellum pale
Board in the bookcase….”
And then their contents!
“Whoever remembers the rough blue paper bags
Loose sugar was once sold in might remember
The jacket of (was it Oliver & Boyd’s?)
Collected Hugh MacDiarmid. And the skimmed milk
Bluey-white of the Chatto Selected
Elizabeth Bishop. Murex of Macmillan’s
Collected Yeats. And their collected Hardy…”
MMMMM! This is too much in so few words! It is so vividly and delicately done; the delight of the contents of the books he refers to, but also the sensuous pleasure of the touch of those books and shelves is contained in these few lines.
His tiny sketches of other poets each contain a vivid minature of the person to whom he responds. For instance there is affection as well as comedy as he describes Thomas with a few fragments that everyone knows about him, transposed with that last phrase into the environment of an Irish bar:
“Dylan at full volume, the Bushmills killed.
‘Do Not Go Gentle.’ ‘Don’t be going yet.’
As always with Heaney, these details merge into a much bigger whole; the boards of that delightful bookcase become the coffin boards of each poet and each reader, not in the dusty death of the Metaphysicals but into a place where:
“…it has grown so light.”
These few quotes hardly scratch the surface of the riches of this volume of Heaney’s poems, but I have to quote one final fragment. One of the qualities that makes Heaney so attractive a poet to read is the constant humour that bubbles through his poetry, integrated within the subtle and complex interplay of feelings that is woven into all of his poetry. “Vitruviana" is a magnificent little poem, but I love that playfulness with Eliot’s words and Joyce's setting, along with the use of such banal words that he makes work so well for his purpose, but which would fail abjectly in most hands:
“On Sandymount Strand I can connect
Some bits and pieces…”
GO ON! READ THEM. They are well worth it.
But I’ve got to say a little more, even if it’s only to hint at some of his riches through quotations. “Perch” gives us all of ten lines about a few fish in the River Bann, but what a gem of a poem it is:
“Perch on their water-perch, hung in the clear Bann River
Near the clay bank in the alder dapple and waver."
This is one little example of the clarity and vividness of his descriptions that I love so much. What a superbly done picture in 21 simple words. I love the little word play in the first 5 of them and the echoes of Hopkins in the last 6 words.
Then there’s his trademark and almost inevitable reference back to his childhood, marrying his past with his present. That easy merging into and out of the language of his past:
“Perch we called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs…”
Never content with ‘simple’ description or with nostalgia, he moves into something much bigger, transcendent:
“I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body”
He brings them together beautifully at the end – the ordinary with the extraordinary:
“ … on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.”
I’ve read & re-read & re-read again this simple little poem and I just don’t tire of it. The poem is so short and yet containing so many layers of the reality of his experience and of their essence.
“The Bookcase” can’t but appeal to a biblioholic, and I drool over the description of those wooden shelves.
“Ashwood or oakwood? Planed to silkiness,
Mitred, much eyed-along, each vellum pale
Board in the bookcase….”
And then their contents!
“Whoever remembers the rough blue paper bags
Loose sugar was once sold in might remember
The jacket of (was it Oliver & Boyd’s?)
Collected Hugh MacDiarmid. And the skimmed milk
Bluey-white of the Chatto Selected
Elizabeth Bishop. Murex of Macmillan’s
Collected Yeats. And their collected Hardy…”
MMMMM! This is too much in so few words! It is so vividly and delicately done; the delight of the contents of the books he refers to, but also the sensuous pleasure of the touch of those books and shelves is contained in these few lines.
His tiny sketches of other poets each contain a vivid minature of the person to whom he responds. For instance there is affection as well as comedy as he describes Thomas with a few fragments that everyone knows about him, transposed with that last phrase into the environment of an Irish bar:
“Dylan at full volume, the Bushmills killed.
‘Do Not Go Gentle.’ ‘Don’t be going yet.’
As always with Heaney, these details merge into a much bigger whole; the boards of that delightful bookcase become the coffin boards of each poet and each reader, not in the dusty death of the Metaphysicals but into a place where:
“…it has grown so light.”
These few quotes hardly scratch the surface of the riches of this volume of Heaney’s poems, but I have to quote one final fragment. One of the qualities that makes Heaney so attractive a poet to read is the constant humour that bubbles through his poetry, integrated within the subtle and complex interplay of feelings that is woven into all of his poetry. “Vitruviana" is a magnificent little poem, but I love that playfulness with Eliot’s words and Joyce's setting, along with the use of such banal words that he makes work so well for his purpose, but which would fail abjectly in most hands:
“On Sandymount Strand I can connect
Some bits and pieces…”
GO ON! READ THEM. They are well worth it.
March 11, 2015
We lost a great one when we lost Seamus Heaney. A very strong collection here. He needs no introduction and doesn’t give his readers any either. I’ve always loved a poet like this, the one who assumes that his or her readers know everything; Latin, Italian, farm terms, the complexion of the Irish countryside, all of Virgil, the mystical language of Roman Catholics, the way Ballynahinch Lake looks in the morning.
Also gleaned from this book:
Words That Seamus Heaney Uses That No One Else Uses:
adoze, aftergrass, asperging, birl, boreen, coolth, dreeps, fanked, fenland, flood-slubs, gallowglass, glarry, glimmerman, oxter-cogged, ruction, runnels, scaresome, sud-luscious, sybilline, teat-hued, thunderface, thurifer, underjaws, unsnibbed, wildtrack
Favorites:
“Lupins”
“Ballynahinch Lake”
“The Fragment”
“Bodies and Souls”
Also gleaned from this book:
Words That Seamus Heaney Uses That No One Else Uses:
adoze, aftergrass, asperging, birl, boreen, coolth, dreeps, fanked, fenland, flood-slubs, gallowglass, glarry, glimmerman, oxter-cogged, ruction, runnels, scaresome, sud-luscious, sybilline, teat-hued, thunderface, thurifer, underjaws, unsnibbed, wildtrack
Favorites:
“Lupins”
“Ballynahinch Lake”
“The Fragment”
“Bodies and Souls”
October 8, 2019
A volume that demonstrates Heaney's craft and ability to tell a story in a poem and unearth the richness of language.
March 17, 2025
I much preferred the second part full of moving elegies. The first part I can see Heaney is returning to a lot of childhood memories, as well as drawing a lot on classical allusion, but I think maybe I lack the context to connect with them? My fave from the first part is The Border Campaign, perhaps no surprise as I love Beowulf!
Read
November 10, 2024Listened to Heany reading this on audiobook. The first half did little for me, while the second half was splendid (with several poems which knocked me sideways).
January 2, 2018
Seamus Heaney has no equal.
Here, an excerpt from his poem "Audenesque":
Worshipped language can't undo
Damage time has done to you:
Even your peremptory trust
In words alone here bites the dust.
Dust-cakes still -- see Gilgamesh --
Feed the dead. So be their guest.
Do again what Auden said
Good poets do: bite, break their bread.
He is a dense poet, one I don't even pretend I can truly grasp the whole of. Still, I read, and will doubtless read again, and again, and again. There's so much to delve into, so much to see and to feel.
Truly, the world is a blessed place to have had, and to still have, his poetry available in it.
Here, an excerpt from his poem "Audenesque":
Worshipped language can't undo
Damage time has done to you:
Even your peremptory trust
In words alone here bites the dust.
Dust-cakes still -- see Gilgamesh --
Feed the dead. So be their guest.
Do again what Auden said
Good poets do: bite, break their bread.
He is a dense poet, one I don't even pretend I can truly grasp the whole of. Still, I read, and will doubtless read again, and again, and again. There's so much to delve into, so much to see and to feel.
Truly, the world is a blessed place to have had, and to still have, his poetry available in it.
August 26, 2016
I picked up this collection after encountering one of Heaney's poems that made me want to read more. I had to work hard (pondering and googling) to "get" most of the poems in this book, which I am willing to do, but in the end, I found I had an intellectual appreciation of the poetry but was not drawn to it on a visceral level.
January 6, 2016
I always appreciate dips into Heaney's dazzling word-hoard.
June 30, 2021
More a 3.5 but I didn't love this book quite enough to bump it up to a four.
My third Seamus Heaney collection, and my least favourite so far. It’s not the quality of the poetry though (that was excellent, as usual). It’s more that I didn’t connect with the classically inspired poems in the collection, and this one had a lot of them. Who knows, maybe I was just reading this at the wrong time; a reread somewhere down the road sounds like a good idea.
[Longer review to follow eventually; I'm still catching up.]
My third Seamus Heaney collection, and my least favourite so far. It’s not the quality of the poetry though (that was excellent, as usual). It’s more that I didn’t connect with the classically inspired poems in the collection, and this one had a lot of them. Who knows, maybe I was just reading this at the wrong time; a reread somewhere down the road sounds like a good idea.
[Longer review to follow eventually; I'm still catching up.]
July 30, 2022
i think i’d rate it higher if i was smart enough to understand the poems
but i think it was good?
but i think it was good?
January 4, 2019
were we not made for summer, shade and coolness
and gazing through an open door at sunlight?
for paradise lost? is that what i was taught?
first poetry collection of year and what a solid start. heaney's "station island" was among my best books of last year (considering the amount of his collections i pick by year, it was statistically probable) and although "electric light" doesn't quite left the same impression (nor similar to my impressions on "death of naturalist," my favourite by heaney so far) it makes a considerable effort.
divided into two parts, the first one deals with almost a semi-classical, poetical take on nature and travel writing, with some greek and latin translations thrown in the mix as well. which is what you would expect from the author. the second part is a glorification of heaney's literary friends, family and other acquaintances. although both parts might strike a different tone from one another, they felt like equal complementary companions to each other's tone and themes.
our very music, our one consolation
here's a selection of the poems i enjoyed the most (links when found):
x "lupins" link
x "red, white and blue"
x "ten glosses" link
x "on his work in the english tongue"
x "audenesque" link
and gazing through an open door at sunlight?
for paradise lost? is that what i was taught?
first poetry collection of year and what a solid start. heaney's "station island" was among my best books of last year (considering the amount of his collections i pick by year, it was statistically probable) and although "electric light" doesn't quite left the same impression (nor similar to my impressions on "death of naturalist," my favourite by heaney so far) it makes a considerable effort.
divided into two parts, the first one deals with almost a semi-classical, poetical take on nature and travel writing, with some greek and latin translations thrown in the mix as well. which is what you would expect from the author. the second part is a glorification of heaney's literary friends, family and other acquaintances. although both parts might strike a different tone from one another, they felt like equal complementary companions to each other's tone and themes.
our very music, our one consolation
here's a selection of the poems i enjoyed the most (links when found):
x "lupins" link
x "red, white and blue"
x "ten glosses" link
x "on his work in the english tongue"
x "audenesque" link
January 2, 2018
This collection by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney is quite worth the investment in time. Heaney has a supreme gift of word choice, arranging words in ways that you, the reader, did not know was workable. Additionally, he is a master of both form and meaning. His poems contain no waste, each word chosen carefully and no word superfluous. This collection ranges from ancient themes to his childhood Irish landscapes. My favorite lines are from Part III of “Out of this Bag”:
“I wanted nothing more than to lie down
Under hogweed, under seeded grass
And to be visited in the very eye of the day
By Hygeia, his daughter, her name still clarifying
The haven of light she was, the undarkening door.” (10)
See my other reviews here!
“I wanted nothing more than to lie down
Under hogweed, under seeded grass
And to be visited in the very eye of the day
By Hygeia, his daughter, her name still clarifying
The haven of light she was, the undarkening door.” (10)
See my other reviews here!
September 29, 2020
Like shining a light on Seamus Heaney's pastoral boyhood memories mixed up with Irish revolutionaries, Middle English, distant travels, mythology, great poets, and friend/family portraits. Oh, to have this man's vocabulary! Heavy with unfamiliar references, but I enjoyed looking them up as I read.
The Clothes Shrine
"It was a whole new sweetness
In the early days to find
Light white muslin blouses
On a see-through nylon line
Drip-drying in the bathroom
Or a nylon slip in the shine
Of its own electricity--
As if St. Brigid once more
Had rigged up a ray of sun
Like the one she'd strung on air
To dry her own cloak on
(Hard-pressed Brigid, so
Unstoppably on the go)--
The damp and slump and unfair
Drag of the workaday
Made light of and got through
As usual, brilliantly."
The Clothes Shrine
"It was a whole new sweetness
In the early days to find
Light white muslin blouses
On a see-through nylon line
Drip-drying in the bathroom
Or a nylon slip in the shine
Of its own electricity--
As if St. Brigid once more
Had rigged up a ray of sun
Like the one she'd strung on air
To dry her own cloak on
(Hard-pressed Brigid, so
Unstoppably on the go)--
The damp and slump and unfair
Drag of the workaday
Made light of and got through
As usual, brilliantly."
October 6, 2009
I'm philosophically interested in this book, and poetically I guess. I feel like I need to read it again, and then read all of Heaney's other poetry before I can say to much about it. I love the poem "Lupins"; and I'm partial to another poem in here about playing soccer, which is a loose analogy for writing poetry - what else. I've been interested in the way that the task of writing poetry, and thinking about writing poetry has taken over the writing of poetry. Most contemporary poetry is about writing poetry. Ondaatje, and every amateur poet in Canada has this disease. I like a little less of it then I get, but hey.
Read
July 21, 2022Up & down on this one! A slower start than usual & some middling poems which are unlike SH but there's a curiously Catholic thread in this which seems more explicit here than anywhere else I've encountered in his poetry. It's also the most interesting theme of the collection so it seems to lean on that which I don't awfully mind. Stronger second half.
Lovely elegies for Hughes & a sweep of Scottish poets. Title poem also wonderful
Lovely elegies for Hughes & a sweep of Scottish poets. Title poem also wonderful
February 16, 2019
I struggled with some of the referents and allusions the first time through. Four stars for now. I'm reading it again.
I've finished my second reading. I looked up some unfamiliar words, and I got a better sense of the referents and allusions. Yet I hesitate to give this collection five stars. But I will give it four & one-half stars.
I've finished my second reading. I looked up some unfamiliar words, and I got a better sense of the referents and allusions. Yet I hesitate to give this collection five stars. But I will give it four & one-half stars.
July 17, 2023
Seamus Heaney is I feel an exceptional Poet. I also feel that due to his poems need to understand Latin Literature, Irish History and many other subjects I am not up to reading him properly. I felt the same about T S Elliott except his practical Cats. I'm certainly not up to writing this review. Ho Hum
December 24, 2017
read when at the countryside of the british isles.
filled to the brim with classical references which makes it difficult to get through at times. nostalgic and enchanting language construct poignant and vivid images. very pretty to read.
filled to the brim with classical references which makes it difficult to get through at times. nostalgic and enchanting language construct poignant and vivid images. very pretty to read.
November 25, 2025
I caved and looked up the meaning behind many, if not most of these, but that's ok! Favorites included:
- Perch
- The Border Campaign
- Known World
- The Little Canticles of Asturias
- The Clothes Shrine
All of my favorites were in Part I. Part II was mostly in memoriams for authors and poets I'm not familiar with.
Some favorite passages:
From Ballynahinch Lake,
From The Real Names,
From Vitruviana,
- Perch
- The Border Campaign
- Known World
- The Little Canticles of Asturias
- The Clothes Shrine
All of my favorites were in Part I. Part II was mostly in memoriams for authors and poets I'm not familiar with.
Some favorite passages:
From Ballynahinch Lake,
So we stopped and parked in the spring-cleaning light
Of Connemara on a Sunday morning
As a captivating brightness held and opened
And the utter mountain mirrored in the lake
Entered us like a wedge knocked sweetly home
Into core timber.
From The Real Names,
Pinhead words
In the thick sable of the universe.
Single line to sing along the lifeline.
Sometimes it was as if a chink had opened
Upon a scene foreseen and enterable-
Like the perpetual that shone in the sparks going up
From MacNicholl's chimney:
I was crossing the yard
When I saw them that one time,
Babe in the world. up to my eyes in it,
Up and about in the winter milker's darkness,
Hand held by one with a lantern in her hand.
From Vitruviana,
On Sandymount Strand I can connect
Some bits and pieces. My seaside whirligig.
The cardinal points. The grey matter of sand
And sky. And a light that is down to earth
Beginning to fan out and open up.
October 11, 2023
Heaney is an incredible poet, but he is a poet with a long and remarkable career - one can love his poetry and find that a particular collection doesn't connect. Maybe it's just a matter of taste, but even for me, with a Classics degree, his love of classical metaphor and reference gets a bit wearying over time. One of the problems of poetry is, as it exists in its most popular incarnations, it is intended to 'speak to' people, and yet Heaney's displays of erudition more often just make me want to concede, to acknowledge, to clap politely at his mastery of language. He is a little remote himself, and his interests don't always seem to align with mine, and so I feel a gulf similar to those I've felt among, essentially, all Irish men of his generation.
Time and time again I read poetry and feel things such as these and wonder what the point is of writing; it must be obvious to any reader that I do not even really like poetry. That is a long road. I haven't yet found a voice to speak with any true conviction or authority.
Time and time again I read poetry and feel things such as these and wonder what the point is of writing; it must be obvious to any reader that I do not even really like poetry. That is a long road. I haven't yet found a voice to speak with any true conviction or authority.
September 19, 2018
This collection was evenly uneven. The first 2/3 (aside from the first poem which I enjoyed) was so seeped in ancient myth and form that aside from admiring the craft there was little to get excited about. The first 2/3 of poems were seeped in reference and allusion, much of it far too inaccessible.
However, in that final 1/3, when the poems became more grounded and Heaney began eulogizing other poet friends such as Joseph Brodsky and Ted Hughes, the collection really grabbed a hold of me and I found a number of poems that I greatly appreciated. Heaney is one of my 2 or 3 favorite poets of all time, and I've been floored by most of his work, especially in the earlier collections. This was one of his last, and grouped among his final 3 or 4 books which really took on a life that lost some of its charm. That said, there was much to enjoy about the latter portion of this collection.
However, in that final 1/3, when the poems became more grounded and Heaney began eulogizing other poet friends such as Joseph Brodsky and Ted Hughes, the collection really grabbed a hold of me and I found a number of poems that I greatly appreciated. Heaney is one of my 2 or 3 favorite poets of all time, and I've been floored by most of his work, especially in the earlier collections. This was one of his last, and grouped among his final 3 or 4 books which really took on a life that lost some of its charm. That said, there was much to enjoy about the latter portion of this collection.
August 7, 2019
Full disclaimer: I read this to be a quick read, and also I’m not one for poetry.
This collection of poetry was worse than other poetry I’ve read. It’s from the author who translated Beowulf, and it’s filled with Gaelic words, and moments he shared with people from his lifetime. I guess the book is the poetic version of an autobiography so to say, but BOY is it just not really good. Maybe someone who knows more about Ireland, and this authors life, or even just classical works (which were also in it throughout) would get more from it.
However when he describes nature, it was often beautiful. But nothing that resonated with me, and I feel like I probably won’t even remember a thing about this in three days.
This collection of poetry was worse than other poetry I’ve read. It’s from the author who translated Beowulf, and it’s filled with Gaelic words, and moments he shared with people from his lifetime. I guess the book is the poetic version of an autobiography so to say, but BOY is it just not really good. Maybe someone who knows more about Ireland, and this authors life, or even just classical works (which were also in it throughout) would get more from it.
However when he describes nature, it was often beautiful. But nothing that resonated with me, and I feel like I probably won’t even remember a thing about this in three days.
February 2, 2020
This was not my kind of poetry; it was full of literary references I didn’t get and words that I was unfamiliar with. With poetry that uses the odd word or reference, and tends to draw me in regardless, I’m willing to put the work into understanding the poems, but with this collection I was overwhelmed with the amount of information I needed to already have to understand the poems, and therefore uninterested and therefore, unimpressed. Upon reading other reviews of this book, it seems that other readers who are fans of Heaney’s work also found this collection to be reference heavy and more difficult to understand, so I intend to try another of his collections.
The three poems I did enjoy in the collection were:
Lupins
To the shade of Zbigniew Herbert
Arion
The three poems I did enjoy in the collection were:
Lupins
To the shade of Zbigniew Herbert
Arion
December 23, 2020
Heaney's late collection of poetry, Electric Light is a playful mix of mythology, memory and impish punchline. By the time he wrote it he was already a Nobel laureate and well recognised as a master of his craft, so the playful silliness is particularly welcome. The brilliant The Fragment is a perfect synecdoche for the whole collection. Some of the longer poems (like Sonnets from Hellas) went a little over my head, but the rhythm was enjoyable. In the end, it was hard to decipher what Heaney was aiming at. Was he creating myth from his own childhood? Or just playing? It probably doesn't matter, as most of the poems stand up on their own.
July 30, 2019
I’m a Heaney fan, but this isn’t my favorite collection of his. From what I understand, this was published shortly after his Beowulf translation (which is amazing!) and the poems that stand out are the poems that reference that myth. There are great lines scattered and some solid stanzas, but few poems were memorable for me.
July 3, 2020
And the poet draws from his word-hoard a weird tale
Of a life and a love balked, which I reword here
Remembering earth-tremors once on Dartmoor,
The power station wailing in its pit
Under the heath, as if our night walk led
Not to the promised tor but underground
To sullen halls where encumbered sleepers groaned.
Of a life and a love balked, which I reword here
Remembering earth-tremors once on Dartmoor,
The power station wailing in its pit
Under the heath, as if our night walk led
Not to the promised tor but underground
To sullen halls where encumbered sleepers groaned.
July 5, 2021
This is a beautiful volume. Heaney's language and imagery are a delight - buoyant like water, light and airy but also full of depths. If you're not up on Irish history and exhaustive, there's going to be stuff in here that you don't catch (there certainly was for me) but it's still just a gorgeous book. There's a reason Heaney's so respected as a poet; he's fucking good.
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