Tag: Seamus Heaney

“So walk on air against your better judgement . . .”

A review of “The Spirit Level” in 100 words by Catherine Stover

The cover photo is a close-up of a level, which is sometimes called a spirit level. Ah, you might say, this poetry collection must be about finding balance. And since the author won the Nobel Prize in … Read More

“It should not simplify.”

Up and down and up again – the changes in the temperature this spring have caught me off balance more than once. Uncertain times call for poetry, I think, and for contemplating the purpose of poetry. Seamus Heaney’s book The Redress of Poetry shows how poetry should repair or … Read More

“There was a sunlit absence.”

heaney croppedThis is the first line of my current-favorite poem by the Irish poet who was said to be “permanently homesick.”  I wonder if somehow he enjoyed being homesick. (Absence isn’t dark, it’s “sunlit” and the title of the poem is “Sunlight.”) It describes his aunt baking scones in her … Read More