Reviews

• Excellent product.

  Excellent product and packaging, giving me a sense of fulfilment on reading it.

• "My grandfather cut more turf in a day / Than any other man on Toner's bog."

  DEATH OF A NATURALIST was Seamus Heaney's first published collection of poems. It appeared in 1966, when he was twenty-seven. Heaney grew up in a rural environment in Northern Ireland. Many of the poems, especially the early ones in the book, reflect that environment -- Heaney's love for it as well as his leave-taking of it. (Heaney was perhaps a little too squeamish to stay in the countryside, as reflected in the title poem.) Several poems deal with love and marriage. Most are personal; a few touch on larger matters, such as the Great Famine. It is an impressive debut collection, worthy of a poet destined to be a Nobel Prize laureate. All of the poems have a formal structure, and many of them employ rhyme. There is one practice that I find overused: isolating a single word at the end of a line (the first word of the next sentence) or at the beginning of a line (the last word of the carry-over sentence). While few of the poems are profound or spark a desire to memorize, they all are comprehensible, almost all are engaging, and none are silly. Of the thirty-four poems, I marked nine to re-read at some indefinite time in the future, but I suspect that when I do pick up the book again I will re-read it in its entirety. The longest poem covers three pages. The shortest is only nine lines. Entitled "Lovers on Aran" (the Aran Islands lie off the west coast of Ireland), here it is: The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass, Came dazzling around, into the rocks, Came glinting, sifting from the Americas To possess Aran. Or did Aran rush To throw wide arms of rock around a tide That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash? Did sea define the land or land the sea? Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision. Sea broke on land to full identity.

• semplici immagini della memoria

  Un mondo di sentimenti ancorato al ricordo; la figura del padre sempre presente nella poesia di Heaney; l'infanzia, la terra , il lavoro dei campi, le figure di un mondo contadino che accomuna tutti i luoghi di campagna di ogni angolo del mondo, con le sue storie di povertà e arretratezza.L'amore, il vero amore. La poesia di Heaney è autentica, senza fronzoli intellettuali, diretta. Parla al cuore.non al cervello. E come afferma lui stesso è un'indagine, uno strumento di conoscenza dell'essere.

• Amazing poetry !

  The cover is gorgeouuus and the book came in perfect condition ! Highly reccomended read if you love poetry :-) I personnally got it partly because of a great english class I had this year and partly because Hozier's music is inspired by Seamus Heaney's poetry. I wanted to check out what the roots of Hozier's songs looked like, and I was not disappointed, reading Heaney's poetry brings a more magnificent dimension to Hozier's work, loved it hehehe

• fabulous book

  Met Seamus Heaney in Boston years ago - he was speaking at Boston College and heard there were a group of people from North and South of Ireland at Harvard for a short time (he was professor emeritus there at the time). He heard we were in the audience and asked that we stay back - he was so kind. Have visited the Seamus Heaney Home Place in Bellaghy several times and pick up copies of his work wherever I go. Didn't have this one and was please to get it cheaply.

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