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    North: Poems
    North: Poems
    North: Poems
    Ebook78 pages39 minutes

    North: Poems

    By Seamus Heaney

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    About this ebook

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

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 28, 2014
    ISBN9781466864092
    North: Poems
    Author

    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."

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    • 4/5
      I was doing research on Seamus Heaney and Northern Ireland before traveling there. These poems were better understood by me after my trip and having experienced the country in person.
    • 4/5
      Another wonderful collection by Seamus Heaney. Part I uses the landscape of and in particular the bog as extended symbol and metonymy, as the past rises in corpses preserved by the peat to speak to and about the violence of the present. Part II questions the proper role of the poet when facing tyranny, political violence, or other moral outrages.

      Heaney’s musicality and eloquence sing, his diction somehow rich with echoes of the past and yet modern enough. There is a universality to Heaney that assures he will continue to be read, like Yeats, even though the political events have faded into the past.
    • 4/5
      Heaney's language is as careful and apparently effortless as usual--the detail-based poems here paint thought-provoking scenes and characters that are well worth the exploration for poetry lovers. While I can't say that each and every poem is one that drove me forward, there are some here that I'm sure to come back to repeatedly, and for me that's always the mark of a strong worthwhile collection. These poems do take some devotion and energy to pursue, but I'd absolutely recommend them to lovers of poetry and writers at large.

      2 people found this helpful

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    North - Seamus Heaney

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